


life's a game, life's a joke--fuck it, why not go for broke?

by cashtastrophe



Series: goddamn, we missed the vein [1]
Category: Underfell - Fandom, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Baby Blasters, Alternate Universe - Underfell, Angst, Babybones, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Big Brother Sans, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gaster Blaster Sans, Gen, I'm so sorry, M/M, Masochism, Medical Experimentation, Multi, Other, Sans-centric, Self-Harm, Sins, Smoker Sans, Suicidal Ideation, Underfell Papyrus, Underfell Sans, Unethical Experimentation, Weed, Younger Brother Papyrus, can i mix aus and then add my own au, edgeberry, eventually, is that allowed, we all knew this was going to be terrible
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashtastrophe/pseuds/cashtastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bad days, though—man, the bad days, he forgets what he's doing right smack in the middle of <i>doing</i> it. He'll be cracking eggs into a skillet for breakfast and suddenly it's like he's stuck, glitching, staring at his own greyed fingers curled around the brittle shell like they belong to someone else, because he can't remember if he was making an omelet or fried eggs or the hash scramble Pap likes so much, and showing up with the wrong breakfast is tantamount to not showing up at all.</p><p> </p><p>(Cleaned up a bit, broken links removed, and now uf!papyrus-centric in keeping with the rest of the series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As a reformed shitty teenage edgelord, this au _speaks to me._
> 
>  
> 
> As a sort-of adult, I am so, so sorry. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities here. Please don't look. This isn't even really a coherent plot, just like a dumping ground for sad headcanon because Underfell got hold of me an refuses to let go.
> 
>  
> 
> I'm also going to be posting the occasional scrap of comic/illustration for this work, but def not on my regular tumblr (vstheworld.tumblr.com) because I still have to look some of my followers in the face in real life. Sin blog is morelikeskelesins.tumblr.com, please come ~~tell me i'm disgusting~~ say hi
> 
>  
> 
> the soundtrack to sans' entire terrible life is a gross self-loathing punk playlist that you can find [here.](http://8tracks.com/cashtastrophe/life-s-a-game-life-s-a-joke-fuck-it-why-not-go-for-broke)
> 
>  
> 
> Any feedback would be appreciated, as english is not my first language, and am rarely sober. Please see end notes for trigger warnings

[now]

 

He's always had a shit memory. 

 

He's pretty sure he has, anyways. Like, maybe seventy-five percent on that. He obviously has no way of knowing if he's actually right because, y'know, it's not like he'd _remember_.

 

It kind of comes and goes in waves, far as he can tell. Sometimes—good days, although the qualifier is probably far too optimistic for what those days are actually like—he’ll just kind of keep forgetting where he put things down. 

 

He leaves a glass half-full on the kitchen table and pours himself another before he realizes. Forgets his jacket in his bedroom closet and spends twenty minutes frantically searching the living room for it. Loses his keys. Locks the front door behind him without said keys a couple times, actually, and has to just huddle pitifully on the doorstep until Papyrus gets home at the end of his shift. He drops his gaze down when it’s time for the small gaggle of children to make their daily trek home from school. He can’t make out what they’re whispering, but the way they keep glancing at him makes it pretty apparent who their subject of ridicule is.

 

He even manages to lose his phone once, fallen from his pocket and vanished somewhere in the apparent void of snowdrift between the corner shop and their house. By the time he finds it again—four hours on his hands and knees in the snow, he can’t even _feel_ his hands—there are eight missed calls from his brother.

 

Pap backhands him for that one, hard. He can't lie properly on his left side for a few days after without the edges of the new crack in his skull grating together, impossibly loud in his head, agonizing claws on a chalkboard.

 

 _That_ particular lesson never needs repeating.

 

The bad days, though—man, the bad days, he forgets what he's doing right smack in the middle of _doing_ it. He'll be cracking eggs into a skillet for breakfast and suddenly it's like he's stuck, glitching, staring at his own greyed fingers curled around the brittle shell like they belong to someone else, because he can't remember if he was making an omelet or fried eggs or the hash scramble Pap likes so much, and showing up with the wrong breakfast is tantamount to not showing up at all.

 

Even worse, he knows Pap told him, he _knows_ it, he remembers nodding along like a fuckin' bobblehead doll at the instructions, but it's lost somewhere in the churning waters of his own traitorous brain.

 

And then he just kind of hyperventilates until the eggs burn anyways, so. It's not like it really matters.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

He does remember, though, with blistering fuckin' clarity, the very first time he saw Papyrus successfully take down the Captain during practice. It's one of the few things he's got on technicolor repeat on the inside of his skull, the moment he watched his little brother smash the closest thing he had to a friend into the ground, all his sharp teeth bared in a rictus grin, and realized that the toddling little babybones that he'd raised was well and truly gone. Irrevocably gone. Never-coming-back kinda gone, and sans studied the cracks creeping like vines across Papyrus' left sphenoid bone, a slick, hot feeling in the back of his throat he didn't recognize.

 

He’d always known he’d be an absolute shit parent.

 

Papyrus was a feral thing in motion, capable of hauling his sizeable frame at a pace even the limber Captain had some trouble competing with. He towered over her by at least a head, and his bones—healthier than sans, thank god, there'd been a few years there Pap didn't seem to be growing so fast, but he'd shot up at twelve and not stopped 'til he hit twenty—are powerful, dense things, heavy and toughened in stark, humiliating comparison to his own birdlike fragility.

 

When Pap hit, he hit hard as a goddamn freight train. Undyne was good, _really_ good, twisting out of his way, constantly ducking out of his eyeline, but even she could only avoid him for so long before she slipped in a fresh patch of ice and Pap seized his opportunity. 

 

With a dull _thud_ and a cruel blow to the gills, he sent her flying into the rough black bark of a nearby tree. Sans winced at the sound she made, this horrible, brittle _snap!_ that hopefully had more to do with the frozen tree than her actual bones. She slid, wheezing and pale, to the tangled roots where she crouched in the dirty snow, gasping for air.

 

"You _prick_ ," she huffed happily, gave herself half a second to recover having the literal wind punched out of her, and then somehow she was up, she was on her feet. She was grinning like a lunatic, like it was her birthday and Gryftmas come all at the same time. Before sans even really processed that she’d lunged at Papyrus, she landed a vicious kick into the plate of Papyrus' right knee. Sans inwardly cringed as the bone slid, accompanied by a dull _crunch_ way, _way_ too far to the side.

 

Papyrus dropped with a grunt and Undyne fell back, circling him like a tiger while she waited out his next move. It was clear she intended to wear him out—Pap was a bruiser, but sans knew from experience it took a lot of energy to throw himself around like that, and he’d overdone it trying to land the first blow. He winded fast. Undyne loved nothing like the long game, and she had the stamina of a goddamn wolf.

 

The thing was—and this, he remembers often as he stares blankly at the cheap plastic glow stars stuck to his ceiling, feverishly twisting his fingerbones into his bedsheets like the repetitive motions might somehow exhaust him enough to finally _sleep—_ the Captain, despite the way she was breathing kind of funny now, was smiling. She looked like she was actually having fun, like it was the best day of her life, getting the shit kicked out of her by her second in command. She was a shark with the copper scent of blood in the water, all her jagged teeth on proud, bristling display. 

 

They'd done this when they were kids, too, Paps and Undyne. Every time there was a display like this, a final violent overflowing of the rivalry boiling between the two—which happened roughly every six months—sans had to stare at his own sneakers for a long time and remind himself not to think about anything like—

 

—like that one time that he'd had to patch up a skinned elbow when Undyne, reckless little whirlwind of a demon that she was, had somehow managed to get herself shoved off the porch roof and onto the hard-packed dirt of the front walkway. 

 

Papyrus had watched, arms folded stubbornly over his chest, as sans took her tiny scaled hand and led her inside. He had not apologized.

 

"You're pretty good at this," she'd observed, kicking the heels of her tiny combat boots at the side of the bathtub. “From listening to Pap, I didn’t think you were good at _anything_.”

 

Sans thought he'd had a crippling headache that day—heh, but to be fair, when did he _not?_ —but he'd said nothing in response, only set the first aid kit out on the floor next to him with a practiced kind of ease. He wondered how they’d managed to get up on the roof in the first place. 

 

“Shut your eyes. This might hurt," he'd offered, and that was all the warning she got before he proceeded to upend a plastic bottle of vodka over her bleeding arm.

 

Undyne had promptly shrieked at the pain and bit him, more out of reflex than anything, her tiny needle teeth clamping down _hard_ on his exposed forearm. 

 

Much to her surprise, they'd sunk straight into the bone, right down to the root, like sans was made of rice paper. Undyne sputtered in shock and let go--she'd bit Papyrus before, many, _many_ times, and it was exactly as pleasant as choking on a bone accidentally left in her food.

 

 

Sans hadn't reacted. He'd made no move to pry her off, or any indication that he'd even felt her teeth. She'd pulled back like she’d been burned, the taste of dust crumbling awful and cloying like powdered sugar on her tongue, in the back of her throat. _Gross._ "Uh, sorry," she’d muttered before she quite remembered to stop herself. Even worse, she then followed it with "Hey, uh, are—are you okay?” 

 

The tiny pinpricks of light in sans' eyes had flickered, guttered out and died, leaving her locking gazes with empty black sockets. “what do you mean, kid.”

 

She shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “does…does Pap get hurt a lot or something?” She made a vague kind of motion towards the medical kit. He’d stared at her like that, blank, silent and still for a long time. Long enough for Undyne to start to squirm under the scrutiny. She didn’t really enjoy staring down a grim reminder of her own mortality, thanks.

 

Then he'd chuckled, this low, hollow laugh she'd never heard him make before.

 

"hey," he'd said instead of answering her question, his chipped fingers deftly unwrapping a bright purple (!!!) bandage to cover her wound. "you wanna hear a joke instead, Little Miss Fish? Why did Sally fall off the swing?”

 

She had squinted at him, suspicious. He was dodging. She _hated_ when adults did that. “Dunno. Why?”

 

“Because… _she had no arms._ ”

 

She’d paused for a moment, blinked her big yellow eyes at him and then cracked up laughing, this enormous bark of a thing that made sans’ eye sockets crinkle at the corners in amusement. “You like that? Man, okay, you’re gonna love this one. Knock, knock.”

 

‘Who’s there?” she had demanded eagerly.

 

“Definitely not Sally!”

 

Undyne had been so pleased, she’d barely punched him in the arm hard enough to bruise.

 

Undyne was playing with Papyrus, now, taunting him, darting under his swings to tag him and daring him to try tagging her back. For all the world, the fight looked very nearly friendly, but sans knew few things _quite_ so well as he knew his brother. He knew, intimately, the whipcord lines of tension in the lines of Papyrus’ shoulders, the way he gnashed his teeth together until sans’ own mangled mouth ached in sympathy, and he knew Papyrus wasn’t there to have a good time.

 

He wondered if Undyne had any idea that their biannual sparring matches were only practice on her part. He wondered if she knew Papyrus would slit her throat, given half a chance.

 

He thought she probably did. Anyways, it was just her luck (?) Asgore had a regular habit of turning up to these events. He seemed to enjoy watching his subordinates beat the hell out of each other, and Papyrus was hungry, not suicidal.

 

Mechanical, stiff, joints aching with cold, sans somehow managed to uncap the flask in his hands and take a long drag. It did nothing to settle his uneasy stomach, the burn of it almost threatening a reappearance in the back of his throat, but he screwed his eyes shut and choked it down like he'd done a thousand times before, like he'd do a thousand times after.  He swallowed, and fished a cigarette case from his pocket, flipping it open one-handed with a kind of practiced ease. He quickly plucked out three pills, downing them with another long drag of the gut-rot in his flask before he really had to look at them, and the case vanished into the puffy depths of his coat.

 

Sans had been sitting flat on his ass in the snow on the sidelines of the sparring rink for a solid twenty minutes, cold seeping in easily through the thick cotton of his sweatpants. He was pretty sure he could feel it in his marrow and he was shivering like he'd been locked in the shed for a week by this point, but still, stubborn beads of sweat pricked at his browbone. Still, he could feel his cheekbones flushing pink and damp, chipped hands trembling bad enough that he had to shove them in his pockets just to stop himself looking at 'em. The whiskey burned in his chest, but it didn't actually stop a damn thing.

 

Inside his pocket, safely away from Papyrus' watchful eye, he picked fervent at a nasty chip across his left pointer finger with one claw. He dug into it until he could hear a soft crackling like tree branches, until he could feel a bright, violent sting of _something_ warm and familiar coiling in his belly.

 

It didn't help, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.

 

He was fine. He was fine, he was fine, he was _fine._ He was, very much in spite of himself, actually having a pretty alright day, up until Papyrus had unceremoniously dumped him at the feet of the Captain’s mate—a short, sort of pleasantly round lizard with a heavily scarred snout, wicked teeth, a familiar-looking labcoat, and large amber eyes fixed resolutely to the screen of her phone. Papyrus had growled,“Hold onto this thing, will you,” at her and shoved one end of Sans’ leash in her hand. She’d promptly looped it around her wrist, leveled a warning glare his way, and proceeded to ignore him.

 

From the sound of tinny musical beeping, she must have been playing a game on her phone. She didn't seemed overly concerned at Undyne's takedown, although sans thought that even if she was, she was also probably far too smart to react here, in public, where anyone could see. She managed to claw her way up the Royal Scientist, after all, years before she even knew Undyne, and she must know how tentative her hold on the position is. She must how vital it is that she and her mate present a united front, a powerful front, a show of solidarity in the face of absolutely anything, so her claws were steady on the buttons. She didn't so much as glance up when the Captain made a strangled noise of what might have been pain on a lesser monster.

 

Sans wondered how she did it. He'd finally managed to stop himself flinching every time Pap took a hit, but that was a long, rough process. And anyways, the Scientist didn't look like the sort of monster to let her mate smack her around, Captain or not.

 

While he was busy staring at the Scientist—did he know her? he didn’t know her, he knew _of_ her, everyone knew _of_ her, but they’ve never met, she hasn’t even spoken to him, so why is there such a horrifying comfort in huddling at her feet?—there’s an awful noise from the ring and sans’ head whipped around just in time to catch Pap’s broad fingers curled around the hilt of his blade, pressed into the Captain's gills. The sparse crowd went abruptly silent, one collective breath held at the impossible sight of their commander on her back.

 

"Yield," Papyrus had hissed viciously at her.  And he should have been marveling at this, probably, at the fact that his baby brother had just laid out his _Captain,_ at the raw power sparking in his powerful bones and between his clenched teeth, but all sans could think as the Captain tipped her head back to accept the customary notch below her jaw that indicated she'd been defeated, was _oh, hey, lookit, his hands don't shake!_

 

The Captain snarled, and bared all of her awful teeth at Papyrus, cheeks flushed dark blue in humiliated rage. She spat at him. She kicked fitful little groves into the snow with her heels. She looked as furious as sans had ever seen her, but her remaining eye glared up at his brother, narrowed with calculating glee and that—well, _that_ was new.

 

Sans tried to imagine her looking at _him_ like that, and it sort of made him want to curl himself into a tiny ball and hide forever. He huddled further into the unruly ruff of his coat at the mere thought, shivering, but Papyrus's broad hands held steady as a surgeon's as he dragged a shallow line through the Captain's topmost gill. 

 

She didn't flinch. There were only four lines above it, and sans knew at least two of them belonged to the king. No shame in that—Asgore was easily four times her size with the added bonus of being _terrifying,_ and the fact that she’d even lasted a round with him as a loudmouth teenager was nothing short of a miracle, he was fond of reminding her.  A third (if the rumor was true) belonged to Her Former Majesty, which is too horrible to think about. The fourth one, she kicked sans in the head for asking about. The fifth, now, belonged to Papyrus.

 

His brother was so goddamn _cool_.

 

She beat Papyrus' ass three times in a row for it, made the point abundantly fucking clear that _she_ was still in solo command of this ragtag ship. She broke Pap’s collarbone in retribution right before she chipped a last ragged chunk of bone out to mark her victory. 

 

The whole time through, he didn't make a sound.

 

She’d started marking Papyrus's notches off in bundles of five years ago, back when he was first accepted into the academy, and she's made it all the way down his neck now, across his clavicle and started in on his sternum.

 

They're the only injuries sans was _expressly_ forbidden to touch. They’re also they only ones sans actually sorta wanted to.

 

“You must be very proud,” the Scientist said, still without looking at him. Her voice was clipped and cold. “To have a brother so formidable as to even offer a challenging workout for Captain Undyne.” She smiled, and it looked like maybe she’d only ever heard the expression described before in books. He wondered if she called Undyne ‘Captain’ when they were alone together. He hoped not. 

 

She tugged thoughtfully at his chain and sans jerked forward, choking. “You, on the other hand, well. You’re a bit of a _glass cannon_ , aren’t you?“

 

 

Sans blinked once, twice, and then—

 

 _he’s not at the ring anymore, he’s not anywhere, he’s in the basement of a place that doesn't exist and he’s naked and he’s trembling all over and you’re a bit of a glass cannon, my boy, off the charts, you are completely off the charts but you’ve got to be fast, fast, faster no faster than_ that _you useless sack of bones, I said_ ** _move it_ **_you’ll get yourself dusted the second they land a blow do you understand me are you even capable of understanding me you idiot—_

 

 _and sans understood, of course he did, he’d understood his place from the day he’d blinked awake on the lab’s cruel steel table and immediately been kicked to the floor, but he hurt, he hurt so_ badly _and he couldn't make himself_ ** _move—_**

 

 

He’d never been more grateful for Papyrus’ crushing grip around his shoulder.  “We’re done here,” his brother deadpanned in his general direction, sounding for all the world as though he isn’t bleeding profusely from the collarbone. sans breathed a tiny sigh of relief as he retrieved the leash from Alphys’ lax claws. She didn’t fight it.

 

“Until next time, sans!” she called after them, “I’d love to hear more about your work!”

 

They’ve barely turned a corner before Papyrus landed a clenched fist squarely on the back of sans’ skull hard enough to send him stumbling forward, his entire field of vision suddenly filled only with bright bursts of pain. 

 

“What did I say about running your mouth in public, what did I say about interacting with other monsters, what did I say about how goddamn _easy you are to kill_ ,” Papyrus snarled at him and grabbed hold of the brass ring affixed to sans’ collar, abandoning the leash in favor of lifting him up onto his toes. Sans scrabbled uselessly at his throat and tried to remind himself that Papyrus probably wouldn’t murder him out in the open like this. 

 

Probably.

 

“Sorry,” he choked. “S-sorry, Pap, I’m so sorry—“ Another blow to the skull dropped him to his knees in the snow. Blinded, he barely managed to catch himself on his damaged hands.

 

“No,” his brother spat, and then there was a harsh weight on his spine—Papyrus’ boot,  a massive, thick-soled affair, crushing him dispassionately to the ground like he’s an insect that holds some faint passing interest.

 

Sans made a strangled kind of wheezing sound as the boot pressed cruelly down on his ribcage, bones creaking in protest. He’d be willing to bet Pap’s got a smile on his busted face a mile wide, if only sans could twist around enough to see him. He _wanted_ to see it.

 

Papyrus crouched down over his prone form like a predatory bird, his knee digging sharp into sans’ shoulder blade, and stroked a fond hand over the cratered ridge of sans’ cheekbone. When he finally spoke again, it sounded very nearly fond. 

 

“No, sans. You’re not sorry yet.” Sans shuddered at the unsettling feeling of two of his brother’s fingers hooking themselves into his eye socket and dragging his head around to meet Papyrus’s coal-bright eyes. 

 

“ _But you will be_.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the folder for this au is called 'dogtale'
> 
> find out why

[before]

 

 

The thing is, Pap's a cryer.

 

It's totally normal, for a babybones his age—sans had done his homework, okay, he's not a _totally_ shit caretaker. He'd pored over dozens of parenting guides those long, terrified nights he spent jittering-awake at the foot of Papyrus' bed having downed a pot of coffee not an hour before, every nerve he doesn't have strung tight, just waiting to be plucked by the closing of the front door and the arrival of—

 

 _Well_. 

 

It might even be a good thing, he thinks sometimes, because as bullheaded as the kid can be, sans at the very least always knows what's happening inside his skull. He knows when pap's upset, or sad, or furious that his dad didn't make it home for dinner again because he broadcasts it at truly alarming volumes. Even if his temper tantrums are exhausting, he’ll take ‘em, because they’re a damn sight better than the way sans' brain just sort of...goes offline sometimes.

 

There's a lot that scares him, but this, this is the absolute worst. 

 

He'll blink awake under the dinner table, curled up in a ball at the end of Pap's bed, shivering on the back porch while Pap pounds at the glass and wails for him to be let back inside, and have absolutely no idea how he got there.

 

He doesn't tell Gaster. He should, he knows anomalous behavior should be immediately reported, so that it can be appropriately documented and studied, but the stomach he doesn't have twists itself into tight knots at the thought of trying to explain it to his creator. Of trying to put into words, into _case notes_ he bleak horror of having blinked and opened his eyes to find the whole world has fast-forwarded around him. He shivers. He tries desperately not to think about it.

 

And it's not...Pap doesn't throw fits or anything, it's not really a temper tantrum, it's more that he just sort of starts tearing up when he's really furious. On top of that, he has the added bonus of absolutely _loathing_ his own body's betrayal, which makes him even angrier, which makes him cry more. 

 

It's a vicious cycle.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Sans figures out by age fourteen _r ~~ight? does he go by the age of his bones, or the years he’s been awake?~~_ that Gaster probably wasn't expecting much from him as a test subject. 

 

Sans can't blame him, really. He knows enough to understand how rarely it is that an experiment goes right on the first handful of tries, and…okay, he's not perfect, he's not even very close, but he's coherent and he's sentient and he doesn't require much more maintenance than a real monster. He's a _success_ , which thrills Gaster more than anything, he thinks, this walking, talking tribute to his own brilliance trailing after him like a pitiful, huddled-down shadow. Sans strokes his ego simply by existing, and that's usually enough to grant him at least a begrudging place to sleep on the couch. Some nights, there are even blankets.

 

He _digresses_.

 

It's damn lucky he turned out as well as he did, actually, because there's a severely limited supply of vessels Gaster could have used. One missing corpse smuggled from the castle in the dead of night is risk enough—though sans wonders sometimes if it was anything more than his own masturbatory dramatics that made Gaster choose the dusty, poisoned bones of the former princeling instead of literally anyone else.

 

It’s creepy. _He’s_ creepy. He wishes often that Gaster had at least chosen a bigger one, maybe, because his body is awkward as a result, unbalanced in its pubescent half-development. He supposes, it could be worse. It's practically a miracle he can even talk, never mind his current career as Gaster's favorite lab assistant. 

 

Sometimes, Gaster even trusts him to keep an experiment running on his own for a few hours while he oozes upstairs to have dinner with his son. Sans stays in the basement, of course. He knows the rules.

 

~~_dogs don't eat at the table._ ~~

 

 

He scratches absent at his collar with one clawed hand, and, head tilted in consideration, finally flips a switch on the control panel in front of him. A new line hums to life on the display readout, this even, spiking pattern traced in hot pink. He watches it dully, heavy-lidded, praying it will do something interesting, something he can _focus_ on besides the clink of forks on ceramic plates and the heavy smell of roasted garlic drifting down from the staircase. It doesn’t, of course. His nonexistent stomach grumbles loudly.

 

He _knows the rules._

 

 

*

 

His mind is the only thing he has of any value to his adopted father, anymore. He's seen Gaster's original sketches for Project S4-N5, and he’s…well, he’s the disappointing sibling right out of the gate, to say the least.

 

He's _maybe_ a third of his projected size, likely not much bigger than the child his body once was. His blunt, awkward fangs are nothing like the intended tusks, his balance on two legs precarious and tiptoed, rather than the low, barrel-chested stance he should have had. 

 

The tail is limber enough that it’s easily wrapped surreptitiously around one leg, at least, and while it makes it difficult to walk sometimes with no counterbalance, he's eternally thankful he looks normal with most of his body hidden under heavy, baggy clothes, his clawed toes shoved into bulky, too-bright sneakers.

 

He's pretty lucky, he supposes, that his adopted family looks so similar to the remains of a human body. He passes for one of them, anyways, as long as he doesn't open his mouth too wide, as long as he doesn't let his burning left eye flicker eerily to life. It’s probably the only reason he’s allowed in the house with them. Or out if it, come to think of it. 

 

~~_He’s seen the shed and the straw bedding for a pet they don't have_ ~~

 

And hey—if he keeps his hands in his pockets, he and Papyrus could actually be mistaken for brothers, maybe. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

His own stuttering magic—borrowed and incomplete without a _real_ soul to root into, Gaster says, and he’s says it like he’s deeply disappointed—gouges at his brain like an ice pick to the skull, most days. 

 

He's relieved to find that the whiskey in the dusty depths of Gaster's coffee cabinet works to soothe the hurt, despite his lack of any apparent nervous system. He's rarely afforded painkillers even so, for fear of their interference with the cocktail of chemicals pumped through him occasionally, but Gaster never says anything when he turns up for his shifts in the lab reeking of the inside of Grillby’s, as long as he can stand on his malformed feet.

 

This particular coping mechanism eventually catches up with him.  Sans isn't surprised at all. Truth be told, the peace he felt when he was well and truly gone, the easing of the ever-present tangle of the dark and slick thing in his ribcage, the unusual sensation of warmth—it was such a laughable relief that it almost made him uncomfortable.

 

Gaster strikes him often but for this particular transgression, he only needs to do it once. 

 

It happens on a night he'd completely forgot he was meant to be watching over his charge while Gaster worked late in the basement lab, mostly because...well, he could have _sworn_ he checked the calendar on his phone before he cracked his first beer, and Papyrus was meant to be in soccer practice until the evening, at least.

 

Sans has been given the day off, so to speak, and spends it in the blessed silence of their empty house, humming quietly to himself as he cleans. 

 

It's nice. It's calm. It's too easy to lose track of time—and liquor—this way, elbow-deep in warm, soapy water, cheekbones pleasantly flushed as he works lazily at the stained grout of the kitchen floor.

 

He likes cleaning.

 

He likes—well, maybe he just likes routine, actually, maybe he just likes the buzzing way his brain bleeds off when his hands are occupied.

 

He likes the quiet of the house when Papyrus is at school and Gaster is at work, and he likes the antiseptic burn of bleach in lungs he does not have. He likes being able to breathe without that constant, trembling terror of making a _mistake._ His father is nothing if not vigilant in a lab environment, but when it comes to their home, he is never inclined to do much to help.

 

Point is, sans is a six-pack of shitty beer and three generous tumblers of whiskey in when abruptly, the front door slams open hard enough to embed the knob into drywall, and he no longer has the house to himself.

 

So, alright, here’s the thing. Pap’s a _little_ too loud. A _little_ too brusque. He rubs kids the wrong way, sans guesses, tending to order his friends around like he's somehow commandeered the playground, and crying furiously when he doesn't get his way and...kids are like puppies, right? They play fight. That's normal. That's socializing. Papyrus snaps, they snap back. It's fine.

 

It's fine until Papyrus comes home with a black eye, anyways, tear-tracks smeared all down his dirty cheekbones, and the collar of his t-shirt torn in three places. He’s bright orange with rage, huffing like a winded horse, and sans’ admonishment of _hey, be careful with the wall_ dies on his tongue.

 

Papyrus’ right eye is deep red and angry, swollen nearly shut, the ridge of his cheekbone bruised to match. Whoever hit him had a hell of a hook, or else they’d taken several swings at his face, and from the way he’s standing, sans is willing to bed he’d find more of the same under Pap’s clothes.

 

When sans reaches out to touch his eye, horrified, with a low, mournful "oh, _Pap_ ," Papyrus snarls at him and slaps his hand away viciously, like sans had been the one to give him the shiner. 

 

"Don't," Papyrus growled. "Just. _Don't_. I can handle it, fuck off."

 

“kay,” sans says, drawing back.  “but you don't _have_ to handle it, pal. that's what I'm here for. remember?" 

 

Papyrus shoves past him with a, "How could I possibly _forget_ , you’re literally _wearing a collar,_ ” spat over his shoulder as he storms upstairs. Sans watches him go, and not ten seconds later, he hears Papyrus’ bedroom door slam shut, the lock sliding home with a heavy **_thunk_ ** followed by the creaking of springs that meant his charge had thrown himself bodily onto his bed.

 

He stares after Papyrus, eyelights dim and considering, for maybe a minute in total, swaying only a little. 

 

He doesn’t lock the front door behind him when he leaves the house and makes a beeline for the playground. 

 

~~_what does a dog need a key for?_ ~~

 


	3. interlude: little miss fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> remember when i said there was no coherent plot? there is no coherent plot.
> 
> sans is...good...with...kids...?
> 
> (fyi, i've started a (non-underfell) comic in a real similar vein to this fic, if you're digging it[ under the 'scribblins' tag](http://vstheworld.tumblr.com/tagged/scribblins))

[before] 

 

 

Undyne’s busy when sans shows up to the playground.

 

She’s spent the last twenty minutes diligently pumping her skinny little legs on the swingset, aiming for the highest possible point at which she can fling herself off. “Bet you can’t,” Alphys had sneered that morning in class, eyeing Undyne’s gawky frame critically. “You’d break both your arms.”

 

She might be right but that’s a risk Undyne’s willing to take out of sheer spite, because for _some_ reason, when Alphys laughs at her, it makes her even angrier than when the other kids do it. She’s ready, she’s fully prepared to snap some bones in pursuit of proving her point when, from behind her—

 

“H-hey! Put her down, you can’t—you can’t do that!”  

 

Undyne smacks herself in the face with her own ponytail, she turns so quick. It’s well worth it—she whirls around just in time to see Papyrus’s older brother, the one who shivers so nervously all the time, and can’t ever quite meet her eyes, pick up Becky, a little brat of a rabbit monster maybe three years Undyne’s elder, by the scruff of her neck. He doesn’t do it gently.

 

“Sans? What are you—?” She drags the heels of her boots into the dirt, grinding to a stop, and hops off the swing.

 

“h-hey, Undyne,” he says easily, as though he’s commenting on the weather, or an interestingly-shaped rock. Like this isn’t tilting her whole limited worldview, seeing him outside the confines of their house unaccompanied. It’s _weird_ , sort of like watching a houseplant take itself for a walk, Undyne thinks, blinking wide-eyed up at him. He barely even _talks_ , those few times she’s been allowed over to Papyrus’ house for a playdate.

 

If he notices her staring, he doesn’t comment. “this is the—the little shit that blacked Pap’s eye, huh? fr-friend of yours?”

 

He shakes Becky once, vicious. He’s smiling—when is he _not_ —but his left eye is glowing in a way she’s never seen before, this roiling pulse of bright reds and oil-slick blacks. It makes her a little bit sick to look at. 

 

Becky’s sister sniffs wetly from where she’s huddled in the sand, huge fat tears rolling down her cheeks, ears pinned back. “She didn’t mean to!” the kit protests. “He was, he was shouting at her, and he’s always so loud! She just gets mad sometimes, she—“

 

Sans must not like that answer very much because he shakes Becky again. “c-cool,” he says. “so this’ll be a nice lesson on r-restraint for you, right? right. that’s, that’s a good life skill to learn, kid, you should really be th-thanking me.”

 

Becky kicks out at him, sneers when her feet don’t connect, “Oh, what _ever._ What’re you gonna do? You can’t even get through a whole sentence without tripping on it.” She shares none of her sister’s apparent terrified stillness, twisting in sans’ grip like an eel. “Lemme _go_ , come _on!”_

 

Thing is, Becky’s a bitch. Thing is, she’s got a bad habit of pulling Undyne’s pigtails when she gets upset, and _that’s_ sort of the worst characteristic Undyne can imagine, so she doesn’t exactly protest when sans’ bloody-black magic seizes Becky tight around the ribcage and hurls her ten feet into the air with no warning at all.

 

 

He doesn’t drop her. He throws her bodily to the ground instead, magic crackling like the static on a busted television. She yelps like a kicked puppy, skids to a stop in the sand almost at Undyne’s feet. Undyne doesn’t help her up. She does, however, CHECK her nearly on autopilot, half without meaning to—and her eyes widen when she watches Becky’s HP shudder down a few points. She’s never seen anyone get hurt before, not like that. Not for real.

 

_Cool._

 

“let me be _abundantly_ _clear_ ,” sans is saying now, letting his eyelights flicker out in that way Undyne’s always found deeply unsettling. He crouches down on his haunches—he’s barefoot, Undyne abruptly realizes, barefoot in the snow and how had she never noticed how weird his feet were before?—just enough to bring himself nearly socket-to-eyeball with the kid, who has somehow managed to pale beneath her honey-brown fur, “you’re not just going to _apologize_ to my brother. you’re going to _worship_ him. the only thing out of your mouth to him until you graduate had better be ‘ _yes, Papyrus, you’re so fuckin’_ great _, Papyrus’_ or i’ll be back to braid your guts into a goddamn daisy chain for him to wear to the  **g o d d a m n    s p r i n g   d a n c e** _.”_ He tilts his head, birdlike.  “did i stutter _that_ time, you little maggot?”

 

The girl’s got guts, Undyne will give her that. Sans isn’t big, but he’s a damn sight bigger than a ten-year-old kit, especially one crumpled like a ragdoll in the dirt. Still, she glares up at him with only the barest quiver to her lip, hissing through her tiny sharp white teeth. “You—you can’t do that, we’re kids!” she protests shrilly.  “You can’t kill a _kid_ , it’s against the _law_ for a grown monster to kill a kid!”

 

Sans laughs and stands back upright, his spine cracking and popping with the motion. It’s not a terribly pleasant sound.

 

“sure. you’re right. that _is_ the law for monsters, isn’t it.” He jams his hands into his hoodie pockets and shrugs. He turns then to Undyne, who’s got her tiny little fingers balled into pale-blue fists, eyes wide, all her jagged teeth bared in excitement at the prospect of watching sans throw down with one of her classmates—especially one that’s worked so hard to get on Undyne’s bad side. “you wanna tell ‘em, little miss fish?”

 

It takes her a moment to process what he’s asking. Tell her? Tell her what? Tell her Papyrus’s dad keeps a half-mad guard dog on a very thin leash, and said guard dog doesn’t take very well to his charge getting pushed around? Tell her how badly she’s fucked up? Tell her—

 

Absently, sans is worrying the brass ring on his collar between a cracked thumb and foreclaw. She’s never actually seen him wear it outside the house before either, now that she thinks of it, because—

 

Because—!

 

“He’s not a _monster_ ,” Undyne breathes, awed. She’s staring up at him, starry-eyed, _impressed_ , and Becky looks like she’s about to be sick. Sans winks at her.

 

“funny thing, huh,” he deadpans. “gaster’ll just put me down, write it off as collateral damage…and the next bodyguard probably won’t be so _polite_ , you feel me?” 

Becky nods hard enough that Undyne can _hear_ her ears flopping with the motion. “Yes, uh, yes, _sir_ , I hear you, I won’t—I won’t pick on Papyrus anymore, I promise.”

 

“oh, no. _no_ , honey, that’s not what i asked you for, is it?” Sans rocks back on his heels, looking pleased with himself. “you’re gonna be his best fucking friends, all of you,” he growls. “or we’re gonna see what you look like turned inside out, yeah?”

 

Undyne nods enthusiastically. She already is friends with the younger skeletons, practically besties—she _likes_ Papyrus and his quick temper and his sheer stubborn rage at a world that refuses to conform to his demands, but hell—

 

—who is she to argue with that? Sans spits out every words like he’s got power crackling between his teeth, like he’s chewing lightning heedless of the way it burns. It’s a little unnerving, a little unhinged, okay, because realistically, he’s grown and Becky is still a kid, but.

 

But he’d do _anything_ for Papyrus. Papyrus could make him do anything.

 

_Goddamn._

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gaster and papyrus have a nice chat about sans' future career prospects
> 
>  
> 
> ...jk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here be fontcesty vibes, fair warning.

[before]

 

 

It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize Sans is even in the room with him.

 

In his defense, though, the lights are off, it’s three in the morning, and his brother is huddled motionless at the foot of the stairs, eyelights dimmed to nothing.  If he's shaking—he’s usually shaking—he’s quieter about it than usual, no rattle of nervous bones that Papyrus can hear until he’s snagging his foot on Sans’ femur and pitching forwards over his brother’s stunted, snarled-up body.

 

“Shit!” he hisses, barely catching himself on the railing before he loses his footing entirely. He whips around, angles a glare down to somewhere around his kneecaps where Sans…well, he doesn’t cringe at the sound of his voice, exactly, but it’s a near-miss. Aside from the panicked rise-fall-rise of his shoulder blades, he doesn’t move. “What are you doing?” Papyrus asks after a handful of long seconds, when it’s clear his brother has no explanation forthcoming.

 

Sans doesn’t look at him. Sans doesn’t look at _anything_ , but he answers, dutifully, quietly, “waiting.” The tip of his tail thumps against the carpet only once, and stills. He’s damp, kind of, like he’s been out in the snow, but that can’t be right. Dad has been in the basement since eight this morning, and Sans isn’t exactly prone to wandering off on his own.

 

Papyrus frowns. “Waiting for—?”

 

The basement doorknob twists open and Sans gives this low, horrified keening sound Papyrus is sure he wasn’t meant to hear.

 

“S4,” his father says mildly, only it’s pitched just too low, just too even, just shy of casual. That’s…probably not good. At his feet, Sans’ entire body tenses up like Gaster’s pulled tight on the leash he isn't wearing, claws curling deep into the cotton of his hoodie. “I’m fairly sure you know what I’m about to ask.”

 

Papyrus looks down at his brother, puzzled, but Sans is already nodding his head jerkily. “yessir,” he manages, barely audible.

 

Gaster tilts his head to the side and studies his creation curiously, eyes narrowed. “Would you like to tell me about it on your own, or shall we start with the phone call I just received from Rebecca’s mother? Papyrus, it might be best if you returned to your room. We can discuss what happened to your eye later.”

 

At the mention of Becky, Papyrus blinks. Why would her mother call? Surely the girl didn’t want to apologize, she’d made it pretty clear earlier that afternoon, when she’d ground Papyrus into the playground dirt, one paw planted firmly on the back of his skull. He can still feel the gritty bits of soil between his pointed teeth, actually, the taste heavy and metallic on his tongue. And you know what, how dare she, how _dare she lay her hands on him_ , that little bitch, he’d skin her alive next time they saw each other, he’d tear her ears off and _choke her with them_ , he’d—

 

“Why’d Becky’s mom call?” he asks, half because he’s curious, half to interrupt his own brain before it spirals any further off-track. He's already picturing blood splashed bright on new snow, though, so it might be too late for that already.

 

“Something to do with the mess her daughter made of your face, I expect,” Gaster replies, not unkindly, but Papyrus drops his gaze to the carpet anyways. “She was much more concerned, however, about the fact that _my other son_ ,” he spits, and Sans whimpers like he’s been kicked, “paid her daughters a visit this afternoon. Broke three of the older girl’s ribs, she said.” 

 

Papyrus gapes down at his older brother. He—okay, fine, he knew Sans wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way he was treated at school, disliked it enough to voice an actual opinion on the matter, which happened only a handful of times that he can even recall, but…he’d never even seen his brother fight, not for real, much less seen him fight a ten-year-old _child_. “What is he talking about?” he asks, shakily. “I told you—I told you to stay out of it, didn’t I? What the _fuck_ were you thinking?”

 

“Yes,” Gaster says. “You _told_ him. And look how well that’s turned out! You coddle him far too much, Papyrus—he’s becoming a liability. He could have easily killed that girl.”

 

Sans seemingly has nothing to offer in his own defense, but he’s pushed himself against Papyrus’s shins as though he thinks it might shield him from his pseudo-father’s rage. Papyrus doesn’t even think it’s totally conscious, the way he gravitates towards his younger brother when he’s frightened, because it doesn’t make sense—he doesn’t have his father’s streak of casual cruelty, maybe, but he’s hardly kind to Sans. 

 

Papyrus should shove him away, should kick him over and join Gaster at the foot of the stairs. He should be proving a point here. This isn’t his fault, this doesn’t have anything to do with him anymore! He told Sans not to get involved. He tried, he really did, he tried to keep Sans out of trouble, he _always_ tries to keep Sans out of trouble but he was always so incapable of just  _listening_ —

 

“But he didn’t,” Papyrus’s mouth says, mostly without his input.

 

Gaster blinks. “Pardon?”

 

“He didn’t kill her.” Sans actually looks up at him then, browbone wrinkled in confusion and Papyrus doesn’t really register that he’s reaching for his brother until he’s curling his fingers around the  warm, somewhat sweaty curve of Sans’ upper cervical spine. It’s a little crooked, he notes absently. He smooths over the ridge of one vertebrae with his thumb and wonders how he never noticed.

 

Sans shivers. 

 

“You could have, right? You could have dusted her right there and then. More than that—you _wanted_ to dust her.”

 

Sans doesn’t say a word but he nods slowly, dragging, like he’s moving through molasses. The repetitive motion doesn’t seem to soothe him—if anything, he’s shaking harder than ever, but he doesn’t pull away from the touch. “You held back. You wanted to scare her. For me.”

 

“yeah,” Sans breathes, pushing up into his hand. " _yeah_ , that’s—that's all i wanna do, Pap, she shouldn't have hit you—“

 

Papyrus laughs and Gaster's tilts his head to the side slowly, as though he's trying to find an angle from which this makes sense. "You wanted to kill her, though. In that moment, you actually _wanted_ to kill a child." 

 

Sans winces. "i-i guess."

 

"Papyrus, it's the middle of the night," Gaster interrupts wearily, massaging his temples with long white fingers. "Where are we going with this?"

 

“'Where we're going with this,’" he says with a wide grin, "is that he did exactly what you made him for, Dad. He didn't want to, he _never_ wants to fight, but he did it! He was _compelled_ to. For _me_."

 

Sans doesn't stop smiling—he can't, no matter how much he's hurting, Papyrus knows that all too well by now—but all other expression vanishes from his face, like someone’s pulled his plug. He looks blank. Horrified. 

 

“I could make you do anything,” Papyrus breathes. “Couldn’t I?”

 

“Papyrus—“

 

“Listen,” he insists. “You’re hardly a strategist. The king is the only reason you've made it this long without someone dusting you, and that's only because he needs your brain! We both know that, we both know you're absolute shit at fighting so shut up and _listen to me._ Becky kicked my ass today, okay? And how did her mom sound when you talked to her? Did she say anything about how Becky was?”

 

Gaster scowls, shrugs. “Said the girl was scared to death. Tried not to tell her, apparently, until the pain got so bad she passed out getting up for a drink. Lucky her sister still shares a room with her.”  He shakes his head. “I can try again, Papyrus. We always knew he was a long shot.  We should consider ourselves lucky he made it this far, honestly. I can make some tweaks to S5, maybe—“

 

“ _No_ ,” Papyrus snarls.

 

“You’re being unreasonable.” 

 

“ _You_ wanted an attack dog,” Papyrus says. “It’s not fair to punish him for attacking.” It doesn’t escape his notice that this time, when he reaches out to run tentative fingers over the curve of Sans’ right frontal bone, his brother screws his eyes firmly shut. 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some kids have a bad time

[now]

 

 

Papyrus doesn’t say a word to sans the entire walk back to the house beyond an initial hissed “hurry your ass _up_." 

 

He does keep one hand clamped firmly over the back of sans's neck, however, as though he thinks his brother might bolt otherwise. His claws bite into sans’s cervical vertebrae, but it doesn’t quite hurt.

 

(It's completely fair. He can't be totally certain he won't try to run. 

 

Even his sluggish survival instincts are howling at him that a predator's at his throat, at his back, _touching him_ , he needs to get _away—_

 

He'd thought they'd have burned themselves out by now, honestly. 

 

He'd apparently been wrong.)

 

Sans doesn’t dare look directly at his brother.  He keeps his eyes fixed on his own feet and tries his level best not to think about the sluggish drips of red Papyrus is trailing behind in the snow. He tries desperately, he really fuckin' does, but his breath is staring to come in increasingly-sharp gasps as his useless brain catalogues exactly _how much_ of the stuff he's not thinking about. 

 

It's slicking Papyrus’ ragged black t-shirt to his chest, but it’s completely impossible to tell except where he can see it smeared all down Papyrus’s floating ribs. Anyways, his primary field was physics, not biology—he has absolutely no idea how much blood a monster Papyrus’s size can lose before it’s considered critical.

 

He really kind of suspects it might be less than he's lost already. 

 

He keeps his mouth shut, though, just stumbles obediently forward, struggling to match Papyrus’s long stride without the balancing aid of his tail. 

 

As they walk, sans weighs his options. He considers the ramifications of asking Papyrus to slow down a bit, maybe, just so he’s not in danger of tripping over his own claws. Before he can manage to make more than a strangled attempt at his brother's name, though, Papyrus comes to a dead halt beside him, his grip on the back of sans’ neck jerking him sharply to a stop as well. 

 

Blocking the road are three kids, filthy, half-grown, rangy things. Sans recognizes them immediately—they’d chased him out of the forest a few times, when he'd accidentally stumbled across their campfires coming home from late sentry shifts.

 

He thinks the Snowdrake might be the leader? He's the biggest and the meanest-looking, staring unblinkingly at them in a way sans doesn't really care for. His feathers bristle against the cold wind giving him the appearance of being far larger than he probably is. When he grins at them, he's missing a good amount of his front teeth.

 

" _shit_ ," sans mumbles to himself because seriously, come _on_. They can't be fifty feet from their front porch, half-collapsed, sparse shelter though it might be. He can see the door from here. The stupid grinning skull sans he’d spray-painted over it glimmers faintly in the cast of flickering orange Halloween lights stapled sloppily to the eaves. 

 

"Evening," the kid snarls. "Got a little bit of red on you there, boss."

 

Next to him, Papyrus stiffens. 

 

See, normally, Papyrus would stomp past them without so much as a cursory glance. Normally, they would have fled in terror the second he appeared over the horizon, but all that blood sans didn't notice, well.

 

Someone else _did_.

 

And that's something he, oh fucking _christ_ , he really should have thought about it. He should have insisted Pap stop and let him bandage up the wounds, goddamn whatever stubborn pride won't let his brother accept help in public. 

 

Because now—well, the kids have been following, clearly, and they look—

 

They look _hungry_.

 

“Heel,” Papyrus says, low, and sans blinks up at him, confused. Does he—does he actually think sans would run from this and leave him half-dead in the snow for a couple of punk kids to pick off? Does he seriously think sans would ever, _ever_ choose self-preservation over his little brother’s wellbeing? 

 

His fingerbones are clenched tight around the end of sans’s leash, though and yeah, okay, _there_ it is. 

 

Apparently Papyrus’s hands do shake sometimes.

 

‘i’m not going anywhere,” sans mutters, stung. “what the fuck, boss.”

 

If Papyrus hears him, he doesn’t give any indication. “I’D ADVISE YOU STEP OUT OF MY WAY,” he growls in his very best Royal Guard voice, this massive, booming thing that always makes sans flinch just a little, even when he isn’t the direct focus of Papyrus’s rage. “I WOULD ALSO ADVISE YOU RETREAT TO WHATEVER HOLE YOU CRAWLED OUT OF. IT’S PAST CURFEW FOR MINORS, AS I’M SURE YOU’RE ALL _WELL_ AWARE.”

 

Jerry smirks. “We’re not minors anymore, douchewad. Cap here just had his birthday last week.” He jerks his head at the Ice Cap, who nods eagerly. The motion doesn’t seem like it should be possible, with the weird way Jerry’s body is put together. It makes sans a little sick to watch.

 

“AH!” Papyrus says brightly, sounding pleased. He smiles.

 

It’s _terrifying_.

 

Sans barely sees his brother move, barely registers that he’s even initiated a FIGHT before there’s a femur shoved straight through the Ice Cap’s belly, its broken end dripping with shredded skin and wet with a viscous blue he supposes might function as its blood. The kid doesn’t even manage to get a word in before he’s crumbling to dust, and the Snowdrake flinches away from the mess with a bitten-off yelp as his feathers are splattered with a thick mist of blue.

 

“The _fuck_ —?”

 

Papyrus thankfully remembers to let go of sans’s leash before he hurls himself at Jerry, rears his enormous bulk backwards and proceeds to put one clawed hand straight through the thing’s mushy torso. Pap’s hand emerges on the other side, fingers wrapped tight around some kind of pulsing-slick organ. Probably something important, sans thinks, and watches his brother’s fingers unclench, dropping his prize wetly to the frozen ground. Papyrus chuckles. _Now_ he sounds like he’s having fun.

 

“Are you _kidding me_ ,” Jerry spits.

 

Papyrus didn’t really  _have_ to dust that one himself, sans thinks wildly as he sees the Snowdrake’s beak twist in fury. Papyrus was stupid to leave himself vulnerable just to make a point, stupid to leave his back to an enemy that suddenly had absolutely nothing to lose—but there’s that stubborn _pride_ of his again.

 

 _Goddamn_.

 

The Snowdrake is…really fucking fast, actually. It sort of makes sense. He has to be, sans guesses, to have survived this long on his own with no adults to watch his back. He’s young, he’s loud, he’s impulsive, but he’s not weak.  

 

Pap’s back is really only turned for a moment. The Snowdrake has got a limited window to get a strike in and he hits it without missing a beat, without processing his last friend in the world crumbling to dust at Pap’s feet. He screeches out this horrible sound, ragged as a bird’s cry and _flies_ for his opponent, aiming straight for the tender place where the armor doesn’t quite cover the back of Pap’s neck. 

 

(Sans is always bugging him to wear the helmet.)

 

The Snowdrake is fast. Sans is faster.

 

“oh no you fucking _don’t_ ,” he snarls. In less than a blink he’s two inches from the kid’s face. He snatches him right from the air—he looks big, but he’s mostly skin and bones under all those feathers, maybe they haven’t been living so well after all—and without thinking he—

 

He—

 

Well, he blacks out, actually, but when he comes to a handful of ragged heartbeats later, he’s got the kid’s head in one hand and his emaciated body in the other. His grey jacket is black with arterial spray, his armbones slicked to the elbows with blue, blue, _blue—_

 

The thing he remembers later is only Papyrus leaning over him, gathering him into his stupid-huge arms. Papyrus says nothing about the blood. He says nothing about the way sans is shaking.

 

“Thank you,” he says softly, instead. Sans closes his eyes and grinds his mangled teeth together tight, rhythmic and grating until his jaw _aches_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> graphic violence, gore, murder, poorly-written action scenarios, and just a lot of stuff is really terrible.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lines blur, sans has a bad time, papyrus is shockingly not The Worst
> 
> i dunno how i feel about this one, sorry guys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me at vstheworld.tumblr.com
> 
> i draw stuff too

[now]

 

 

He isn't _actually_ suicidal, is the thing.

 

He's a mess, fine, he can own up to that easy enough, but it’s, like—it’s a passive kind of deal, yeah?

 

He doesn't want to _kill_ himself, he's not selfish, okay, he just. It's...mildly disappointing when he wakes up in the morning, is all. 

 

He thinks he's probably not the only one. He thinks it's just part of, you know, being an adult, but Pap's never quite operated on an even keel like the rest of monsterkind, so maybe sans' relative maturity just seems really depressing to him.

 

It's completely fair, sans allows. 

 

It _is_ sorta depressing.

 

His brother is a burning, brilliant thing. He supposes it only makes sense, if he glows dull by comparison. 

 

(‘ _every inferno needs fuel,’ Gaster had told him once._ )

 

If he aches these days, it's only vaguely. He drags himself out of bed the way most monsters would drag themselves up a mountain and after he's downed half the pot of bitter black coffee Pap brews after each morning run, he even manages to trudge his way through the day with some semblance of having it the fuck together. 

 

He makes arrogant, smirking eye contact with other monsters on the street just like Pap said. He puffs himself up and bares his filed teeth and cracks shitty jokes at Grillby and drinks himself blind on his lunch break, and if he's exhausted, he thinks it only maybe really shows around the edges.

 

He'll look at the rickety railing of the bridge near his sentry station only sometimes and think _yeah but what if i_ and that’s where it stops. That’s where he _stops_ it. 

 

He would never. He would _never_ , and that's a huge goddamn difference between him and the pathetic fucks that do, that's what has his mangled teeth clenched tight and grinding, because he's _seriously_ fucked up his role as caretaker even worse than he thought if Pap thinks he would just—

 

Thinks he would—

 

Papyrus had set him on the couch initially, actually set him down gently instead of dropping him—and what is _that_ , sans didn't know what to do with the way his brother had growled "Stay here," at him, or the way he had stalked up the stairs and returned with a damp washcloth and his favorite old black hoodie. 

 

Papyrus positively _loathed_ the thing. “It makes you look homeless,” he’d grumbled the last time sans had tried to wear it outside the house. Even sans thought he maybe had a point. The thing was tatty, faded from a few too many washes and sans' impulse to pick at every available loose thread. The logo across the chest had cracked so badly it was impossible to even tell which beer it was even advertising.

 

And here it was, clutched in his brother’s claws like it was something precious.

 

“Here,” Papyrus said, and dropped a washcloth into sans’ outstretched hand. “Clean up first. No point to changing if you’re still covered in blood, huh?”

 

The washcloth was warm. 

 

Not hot, not dunked hastily in near-boiling water from the tap, but the sort of heat that crept into his marrow and soothed aches sans hadn't even _noticed_. The washcloth was warm but sans’ fingerbones looked so sickly and greyed against the rough white cotton, so _dirty—_

 

Sans had, like a complete goddamn moron, just stared blankly at the cloth in his claws for such a long time that Papyrus had apparently assumed he'd gone offline entirely. And instead of doing the reasonable thing and attending to his still-sluggishly-bleeding wound, Pap had sighed deeply, scrubbed himself down in the kitchen sink, and proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes gently chasing down every evidence of the kid's blood that had seeped into the crevices of his brother's bones.

 

It was all sans could do to hold himself still when Pap finally reached for the zipper of his jacket. "We don't need this being pinned on us," Papyrus had said, and yanked the offending article off as though it had personally wronged him. Sans shivered and stared down at his own scuffed kneecaps. ”I just, I need to _think_ , I can't, if she finds ou _,_ if she—I need, I need to— _shit—_ “

 

Pap's hands still shook, sans had observed with something faintly like concern, something that would likely be full-blown panic if he could only wrangle hold of his numbed senses. "They were adults," he manages thickly, tongue slurring heavily after several false starts. “You—th-they came after _you_ , Pap, you di-ddn’t do anything wrong—“

 

That's important somehow, his sluggish brain managed muzzily. Papyrus needed to know. It was important enough that it pushed its way past the impossible lump in his throat at the very _thought_ of his baby brother hauled away to rot  in the royal dungeons.

 

Sans shoved down the familiar swell of terror at the idea—that was stupid, they were adults, Papyrus had been completely within his rights. “S’what you woulda done to anyone who got in your way, Pap,” he offered.

 

"THAT'S THE ENTIRE _PROBLEM_ , YOU IDIOT," Papyrus roared and slammed one hand, open-palmed down onto the floor. Sans flinched back at the crack of bone on wood, backed far as he could into the lumpy cushions. He bit down hard on the strangled noise he almost let slip, the kind of pathetic sound that always makes his brother's mouth twist in disgust.

 

Papyrus took several slow, measured breaths. He uncurled his hand from the crushing grip it had formed around sans's wrist and when he spoke again, it was quieter, his usual snarl. "Sans...if _children_ feel entitled to a fight with me—it’s one thing when it's Captain Undyne, but these were, these were _nothing_ , they were just sniveling little _gutter punks—_ “

 

He's shaking harder than before, Sans realized, a cold finger of dread sinking deep into his belly, that his little brother was _scared_.

 

" _Stop_ ," sans interrupted. "Hey, Pap, stop it, come on. Look, no one in their right mind would come after you at full strength, alright? You were just, you were injured, buddy, you're really, _really_ injured and those were stupid kids grabbing for something that looked like opportunity. You remember being eighteen. Shit, Undyne tried to fight _Asgore_ at eighteen. It doesn’t mean she wants to be queen.”

 

He doesn't say that if Pap had only listened to him, if he had let sans patch up the injuries immediately after his sparring match with Undyne—like Undyne had allowed Alphys to, like any sane monster would—it wouldn't have been a problem at all.

 

"Let me clean this up," he begged, tugging at Papyrus's black tank top. He winced when his hand came away smeared bright with blood. "Pap, come on, let me patch you up.”

 

"It doesn't matter," Papyrus said flatly and his eyelights skittered off to rest somewhere distantly to sans’ left. His brother couldn’t even _look_ at him and that wasn’t right. Papyrus wasn’t supposed to sound like this, hollow and defeated, as though he was already staring down his own goddamn dust. "These kids were the first. They won't be the last.” 

 

And then: “But if you’re trying to kill yourself, man…I’d kind of prefer you do it off my watch.”

 

 

 

*

 

To be completely fair, he tried it only once: he guessed that was probably enough for a lifetime.

 

He didn’t—man, look, 'trying' isn't even the right word to use for what he did. It doesn't begin to touch the complete lack of action he had planned on his part. It wasn’t—he's not dramatic, okay, he wasn't going to risk Papyrus coming home from school to a body hanging from the fuckin' rafters or anything. 

 

He's an asshole, but he's not that much of one. Pap was a kid back then. He still smiled sometimes.

 

It was gonna be soft and quiet. It was gonna be peaceful. He was just gonna slink off into the forest like a sick dog, burrow himself into the snow and wait for sleep to become a permanent fixture and it was gonna be so good, it was gonna be perfect except Papyrus _ruined it_ —

 

He read once, years and years ago, probably in some outdated textbook he’d long since forgotten, how you could euthanize a reptile simply by shutting it in the freezer. How the tiny brain misfired and fought and died in the kindest stages, like the lizard was just falling asleep. 

 

He thought about that a _lot_.

 

He thought of that perfect moment when his exhausted body collapsed into the worn couch cushions, the moment where his itching eyes finally slid closed and he let the razor tension of his spine ease because here, finally, he had nothing to do but _sleep_ —

 

It was going to be a nice way to go out, was the point.

 

He should have known better.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“I didn’t,” he mumbled, pleading, soul hammering a furious rhythm against his kickdrum of a ribcage. “Pap, I swear, I didn’t—“

 

“Save it,” Papyrus said. “That’s—it’s not _acceptable_ anymore. You’re not authorized to put yourself at risk. You're not authorized to _die._ Is that clear?”

 

He very nearly argued, nearly protested that it had been a calculated risk, one that had _saved Papyrus’s life, thanks,_ except--

 

“I said _is that clear, S4_?” Papyrus hissed and sans’ vision abruptly went an alarming shade of red.

 

“Yes,” his traitorous mouth replied, entirely without his input, even as he struggled to remember how to breathe. 

 

“It’s clear,” it said.

 

“ _Sir,"_ it said. 

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dr. alphys makes a house call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who's stuck it out thus far, esp. u precious snowflakes that leave comments. i appreciate the heck outta you.
> 
> because this truly has no coherent structure, things that are taking place in the "present" (skeledudes are grown) will be tagged [now]. events taking place at any point in their childhoods before Gaster does his disappearing act will be tagged [before]. events taking place after sans takes over as pap's caretaker, but before present day will be tagged [after]. 
> 
> hope that helps a little.

[now]

 

 

Sans is not the most self-aware monster in the Underground. 

 

In fact, he's practically made an art of pointedly ignoring most things his body is trying to scream at him—twisted stomach, gritted teeth, the ever-present ache of just trying to stay upright and conscious—but there are some things he just can’t hold onto, even when he tries. He can’t _remember_. He can recite entire books verbatim, but for the life of him, he can’t recall when, for example, he was first allowed into the house. Can’t remember the first time Papyrus said his name, though he knows for certain it was his brother who named him. 

 

(Sans’ name didn't always have a capital letter in it, the way Papyrus writes it now. Sometimes, he actually manages to forget that.

 

~~ Gaster makes sure he remembers ~~

 

…that isn't right.  ~~Gaster is dead.~~

 

wait—

 

— _that’s_ not right either.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

The fuck of it is, really, that until Alphys shows up at his door—how does she know where he lives, _how does she know when Pap will be out of the house???_ —he actually doesn't remember a goddamn thing.

 

Oh, he knew _something_ was off.He's got this...well, not muscle memory, exactly, but something deeply instinctual, ingrained into the same dumb animal reflex functions that keep him breathing, in spite of his absent lungs. He—he’s the older brother, right, he should have the upper hand based on seniority alone…but he _defers_ to Papyrus without even totally realizing he's doing it.

 

He sits on the floor before he bothers checking the room for a second chair. Lags a respectful few steps behind Papyrus whenever they're out together. Keeps his eyes fixed firmly somewhere around the region of his brother’s kneecaps. Speaks when spoken _to_ , but not _about_. If they've got enough in the house to scrape together something resembling dinner, Papyrus always gets the lion's share without ever having to ask.

 

He knows that probably isn't brand standard for most familial relationships, but if Papyrus finds it strange, he never says a word.

 

(And then there's that goddamn collar and leash hung next to the door on a rusted nail, which. He can't remember a pet. He doesn't think they ever had one, so why—?

 

He knows it's his, though, it fits him like a goddamn glove, like it was made for him, and _that's_ wrong, too.

 

Everything about this is wrong.)

 

“Good morning, sans," Alphys chirps. When she smiles at him—sudden, much too sharp, like she's only now trying the expression on for the first time—he realizes she’s missing one small eyetooth, the empty socket still swollen and red. Two of its neighbors are badly cracked. One eye-ridge is smudged the deep orange-red he supposes might pass for bruising on her, and a fresh new set of claw-marks crisscross her snout, scored deep enough to tug one side of her mouth up in a faint smirk.

 

She’s been _fighting_ , he realizes dully. She’s been fighting and it’s Papyrus’s fault, probably. Would-be usurpers coming for Undyne, probably, creeping into her quarters in the dead of the night, incensed to reckless, stupid violence by the Captain’s defeat at the hands of her second. Like Papyrus’s short-lived victory gave them some kind of hope they might stand a chance against her.

 

The thing they don’t realize, of course, is that Papyrus isn’t _better_ than Undyne. He’s just the closest thing that angry little girl had to a friend, and he’s hungry enough to take full advantage of that fact. If Undyne hadn’t been holding back, Sans would likely be an only child by now, so he’s not worried for her, exactly—he has no right to, he barely knows the kid, but still. It’s a little soothing to think that her mate would defend her.

 

He’s a little jealous, maybe.

 

She barely looks at him before she ducks past him into the entryway, her thick tail nearly knocking him off-balance. "Is this a bad time?” she calls back over her shoulder. She doesn’t apologize.

 

She's not wearing her lab coat, which is strange. She's in a dress instead—even stranger—this complicated flowy black affair that covers her throat to toe, except where it crisscrosses low over her bare back. She's built like a tank, half a head taller than him and easily twice as broad, roped with thick muscle beneath pebbled skin and shining plates—which shouldn't really be surprising, considering who her mate is. Where Undyne is tall, imposing, Alphys is compact and efficient instead. Every inch of her is sleek line, sharp horns, six-inch talons designed to disembowel sweeping up at a right angle to the rest of her. Hers is a body built to _hunt._

 

Sans is suddenly, uncomfortably aware of just how very alone they are together in this house. His meager single HP would be no real match for anything Alphys was planning to do to him. She’s an apex predator in the prime of her health and he may as well be dead already.

 

Her toe-claws are painted an alarming shade of pink, he notes when she passes him, including the sickle-shaped killing ones. 

 

It’s not reassuring, to say the least.

 

"You mean am I alone?" He closes the front door with a soft _click_ and doesn't bother turning around immediately. Instead, he leans his browbone against the cool wood of the front door and breathes in deeply once, twice. Holds. Releases. Does it again. Again. “The Lieutenant is still out on first patrol, if that's what you're asking."

 

"I know _that_ already," she says with a dismissive wave of her foreclaws. She's already in the kitchen by the time he shuffles his way across the living room towards her, elbow-deep in a cabinet she has to stand tip-toed to reach. "Aren't you going to offer me a drink?"

 

"It's eight-thirty in the morning," sans deadpans, though he isn’t completely sure he's sober himself. He'd passed out on the couch long before Papyrus's night shift had ended and woke up well before dawn with a pounding headache and a new tendency to misjudge the distance between himself and any available obstacle. He's either abhorrently hungover or still drunk from the night before, but either way he's pretty sure he smells like the inside of a whiskey barrel. And possibly of more than a few nights in the same clothes, judging by the glare Alphys levels at him around the cabinet door. "Third shelf on your right," he sighs. "Help yourself to anything but the vodka, that’s Pap’s. Mixers are in the fridge."

 

She doesn't bother thanking him, so he doesn't offer anything further, opting instead to meander back to the couch and bundle up under the blanket his brother had been kind enough (?) to drape over him. It’s bitterly cold in spite of the constant, asthmatic wheeze of their heater kicking on and off. He tries to remember the last time he paid the bill. He tries to remember the last time he paid _any_ bill.

 

He rescues his hoodie from where it had been wadded under his head as a makeshift pillow. He sniffs it, wrinkles his nasal bone, but pulls it back on, zipping it nearly up to his chin so he can nestle down into the soft fur lining the hood. It’s not quite offensive levels of musty yet. That’s…pretty much about where he stops caring, these days.

 

"Are you sick?”Alphys presses a glass into his hand, something dark, burnt-tasting and astringent that slides down his throat like he’s swallowed a live coal.Sans is mildly surprised—he’d have pinned her for a fruity cocktail kind of girl, something overly sweet and pink to match her pedicure, not…whatever the hell this is. “You look like shit.” She hops up onto the couch next to him and he tries not to chuckle when he realizes her feet don’t even skim the floor. 

 

“Thanks,” he mutters instead and takes another sip. It burns just as badly but he’s at least prepared for it this time, the pain pooling warm n the pit of his belly. He wonders what his brother will inevitably have to say about _this_ particular trip down the rabbit hole—there’s no way he won’t notice the smell, for one thing. He’s hardly a composed drunk, so who knew what Papyrus had been subjected to the night before after his memory goes black…and anyways, sans is sort of fuzzy on the rules regarding houseguests. It’s never come up before.

 

He figures at the very least, Alphys should garner _some_ kind of respect from his brother for her position as the Captain’s mate, but he is also fully goddamned aware that he’s being an idiot the moment he fishes half of a joint from between the couch cushions.

 

He just. It'll settle his stomach, at least. It’ll—it'll be bad when Pap finally makes it home, real bad, probably, but at least this way he mostly won't feel it. Mostly won’t _care_.

 

“You wanna?” he offers and Alphys tips head head in assent, digging around in her dress pocket for a lighter. She produces one, predictably acid-pink, patterned with a cartoon girl in a fluffy dress, and tosses it to him.

 

"If it'll help you stop shaking, sure. Whatever."

 

It takes him three tries for the flame to catch. The first hit nearly knocks him on his ass, a thick chestful of smoke that bleeds out between his ribs to coil up from the collar of his hoodie. He sinks back into the couch cushions with a deep, contented sigh, lets it spiral through the rictus of his filed teeth, through the blank black spaces where they don't notch together quite right. Alphys stares openly at him from the other end of the couch, wide-eyed.

 

"How does that even _work_?" she asks and sans lifts one shoulder in a shrug, holding the joint out to her roach-end first. She plucks it from his fingers more delicately than her heavy claws would suggest possible. "Do you even have lungs under there?" _Can I see_ , she doesn't say, but he knows her kind enough to hear the question anyways.

 

(That’s another thing, that right there—he’s got nothing to suggest he’s anything but Papyrus’s idiot brother, but there’s a whole stack of theoretical physics books on the shelf that make an alarming kind of sense to him. 

 

Why would he know anything about Alphys’s kind? He doesn’t know them. He doesn’t know _her_.

 

It doesn’t make sense.)

 

"Hey, at least buy me dinner first," he quips, earning himself a scowl over the lit cherry. She takes a drag long enough to be considered impolite. "I don't have any fuckin' idea how it works," he admits as she passes the joint back. “Magic, I guess.”

 

She wrinkles her nose.“Please don’t make jokes. You aren’t good at it.”

 

“I doubt you’re here just for my weed,” he counters, and takes another sip. She watches him do that too, though there’s less mystery there—he kind of just lets it wash through the gaps in his permagrin. Her pupils contract excitedly, flicking from his mouth, to his throat, down to his belly as though she expects to see the drink soaking into his hoodie.“Was there something you needed?”

 

She tilts her head to the side just a fraction, birdlike, nostrils flaring as though she’s caught the scent of prey.“Yes,” she offers after a moment. “I’d like to talk to you about  **[410 GONE]** .”

 

That’s what he _thinks_ she says, anyways, but it’s hard to tell exactly what follows as his skull fills with the high whine of a malfunctioning television, blanking out all other sound.

 

The world tips gently to the side, stutters once, and goes black.

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

 

(410 is the html error code for “gone”—kind of like the “404 not found” error, but 404 means it may be available at some point in the future. 410 indicates that the resource is gone and will not be available again.)

 

 

 


	8. interlude: my brother isn't dying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here, have some babybones pap noodlin' while i wrestle the next chapter together.
> 
>  
> 
> (i live for your feedback. love u guys)

[before]

 

 

 

One night, Gaster comes home and he's not alone.

 

Not Alone is a fairly big concept for Papyrus at that age—six years old in only two weeks, so he thinks he’s allowed to round up by this point, thankyouverymuch. 

 

He’s got this vague idea that his father loves him, probably, because he certainly says it often enough. He doesn't know what that _means_ , really, beyond a vague kind of warmth in his belly those few nights Gaster is actually there to tuck him in. It makes him kind of uncomfortable. He isn’t sure he likes it when those hollow hands smooth over the top of his skull, but he _is_ sure that he doesn’t like the look on Gaster’s face when he said so.He tolerates it, for Gaster’s sake.

( _That_ will become a common theme, though he can't know that yet.)

Papyrus knows his father’s work is important. He knows it’s the reason he never goes to sleep hungry, the reason they have a whole house just for the two of them, and a basement besides, but he also knows that none of his games are really any fun when he’s the only one playing. Sometimes, he can manage to wheedle Gaster's lab assistants into a few rounds of cards if he’s particularly loud about it, but they're more scared of Gaster than Papyrus is, so it never lasts long.

 

That’s…alright, _that’s_ not fair. He isn’t scared of his father, necessarily, it's just—the pulsing black mass of him, the weird, wiggly shapes he drifts into when he's distracted, it's all so different from the sad-eyed (but solid) skeleton he'd known for the first five years of his life. He doesn’t like _different,_ either.

 

Papyrus has only one picture of his family from Before. It's folded neatly in two and stashed carefully underneath the top corner of his mattress. He’s pretty sure Dad purged the house of all other evidence of her years ago so he hides it, treasures it, even though he can barely make out what she looks like besides a vague pink cast to her bones. He can tell she has a long, narrow face like his, the same high cheekbones. Stunted little teeth, though, nothing like his filed-down fangs. All her angles are too rounded to be threatening. She looks…she looks _sweet_ , and that’s such a foreign concept to him at this age that it takes weeks to even figure out the right word for it.

 

It’s not a well-framed shot. It's way out of focus, his mother a blurry, grinning streak in the foreground as she hoists an infant Papyrus towards the camera, his father laughing and giving chase behind. 

 

It’s not bad the way he is now, necessarily, Gaster just—he doesn’t look like that anymore.

 

Papyrus isn’t afraid of him. He’s...not quite used to him yet, maybe. 

 

He is _not afraid._

 

"Subject," Gaster snaps in this strange, cold tone Papyrus has never heard him use with anyone besides the dullest interns, and it jerks him neatly back into the moment. He blinks at his father’s back.The shuffling, slumped creature next to Gaster freezes, its head ducked down like it's braced for a blow.

 

Papyrus wonders, examining its shivering form from his vantage point crouched behind the sofa, who taught it to do that.

 

It's not wearing shoes. The ground outside is covered in at least six inches of snow on a good day, but it seems to be dressed only in an overlarge hoodie hanging nearly to its shins. He recognizes it as one of Dad's, a ragged, well-worn blue trimmed in dirty fur from back before his arms were more of a suggestion than a reality. 

 

Papyrus stares at its toe-bones where they’ve curled into the carpet. They’re so very nearly like his own, save for the heavy claws, the uncomfortable arch of them. It seems almost off balance, like the thing's teetering on tiptoe precariously. The digits are twitching too, erratic, nervous—which seems odd, as its tail remains perfectly still where it drags on the hall carpet. It’s almost though the thought of moving had just never occurred to it.

 

Papyrus frowns. Two of the more friendly lab assistants—one a bipedal dog, one a large, horned sort of kangaroo—have tails, and neither of them hold it like that, limp, lifeless, like it isn't even a part of them. He knows this because his father complains often and loudly about their tendencies to disrupt delicate experiments with accidental swipes of said tails, and the injustice of hiring guidelines that keep him from tossing them out for nothing more than being born with an annoying appendage.

 

"Yes, sir?" it whispers in the general direction of its own feet. It doesn't open its mouth when it talks, so the words are a little slurred as a result. 

 

Papyrus is mildly surprised it answered at all, and then is surprised at his own surprise—it seems scared, almost, huddled into itself like that, but its voice is low and steady. He's not sure why he wasn't expecting that.

 

His father scowls at it. "We've discussed this, S4."

 

It flinches again. "S-sorry. Gaster. Sorry, Gaster."

 

Gaster sighs, long-suffering. “Papyrus,” he calls, and Papyrus’s tiny soul stutters, skips half a beat and then kicks into overdrive, “if you’re going to skulk so poorly in the shadows like that, you may as well come out and say hello. I’ve brought you something.”

 

_Something_. He doesn’t think much of that, until later.

 

Some _thing._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it makes sense to me that if sans remembers the frisk resets, he'd have some memory of the flowey ones, too.
> 
>  
> 
> thank you to everyone who leaves any kind of feedback. you're the bee's knees.

[now]

 

The second he's conscious—okay, maybe he takes a moment to catch his breath, so maybe it's the _second_ second, heh—he grabs Alphys by the throat, wraps dull claws around her windpipe and _squeezes_ before she manages to get out more than a "Hey, are you—?“

 

"What the _fuck_ ," he snarls, dragging her down so she's nose-to-nasal cavity with him, his eyelights dimmed to nothing, "what the fuck was that? What the fuck did you _do_ to me?"

 

"Anomaly," she manages to choke out, scrabbling uselessly at his hand with her foreclaws. "It's an anomaly, you psycho, I didn't do anything—I’ll explain it if you'll stop being so goddamn melodramatic for a minute."

 

He hisses through the spaces in his teeth but he releases her, lets her scramble back from him a few feet, rubbing at her throat. She glares at him over the lenses of her glasses. Her pupils have shrunk to frightened slits. “Was that really necessary?"

 

"You knocked me out," he reminds her. "Papyrus would have snapped your neck."

 

"Lucky for me he's not here then," she deadpans. "Sans, tell me about your—about Papyrus's dad."

 

"He was a total asshole," sans supplies automatically and then—“wait. _What_."

 

She grins and then—

 

_—hands there are so many_ goddamn _hands, what's he need 'em all for anyways, two are more than sufficient to hold him down, always have been, it's not like he's gonna grow anymore—_

 

_—he’s cold, he's so cold and he knows that pressing himself up against the door isn't actually any warmer, doesn't do shit except increase the volume of Papyrus's terrified wailing from inside, and he knows the cold isn't gonna dust him, knows_ **he'd** _never let that happen, not with his son's tiny palms pressed to the window, watching, enormous sockets brimming with impossible tears—_

 

_—he tries not to think of himself as anything but essfourdashenfive, no abbreviations, no deviations; he calls himself by his assignation because it's dremmeled into the underside of his ulna in neat block lettering even his bleary eyes can easily make out. He chants it under his breath when the kennel lights go dim at the end of what passes for day, underground. He writes it in the dirt floor of his own cage, with the razor tip of one claw, over and over and over and over until he's scrunched himself into a tiny corner of unmarked space. He tries. That's the important thing, right? He fucks up, but he_ tries _._

 

_He trains himself not to respond to the name (not his name, never his name, he doesn't_ have _a name) even for the most persistent tech, the one with the pebbly yellow skin and the unsure smile, no matter how much he aches for her soft praises and the way she sometimes smooths her claws absently over his spine when she's distracted, like she’s—_

 

_—_

 

And then Alphys's claws close around his shoulder for real and he rears back like he's been electrocuted, makes this low, pathetic kind of moaning noise he doesn't even register is his for a handful of breaths. He conjures a tongue without even really meaning to, just so he can sink his teeth into it and feel something _give_. It doesn’t hurt.

 

"oh, what the _fuck_ ," sans keens and he only realizes he's cradling his skull in both hands when one claw grazes a nasty bruise along the ridge of his ocular cavity. His head feels like it's been stuffed too full, like it might split from the pressure, crack like a fuckin' raw egg.

 

"Give it a second," Alphys says, checking the time on her phone screen so casually he almost initiates a FIGHT right then and there, because how can she sound so chill about this, his brain is literally _coming apart at the seams—_

 

"It's like a computer with too many tasks," she offers, possibly mistaking his silence for confusion. "You're just processing. Little spinny beachball and all that. You'll catch up." She tips her head to the side, considering. "It's, uh, probably going to sting a bit, though."

 

It does more than that.

 

Sans _howls_.

 

 

*

[before]

 

"You're a very lucky young man," the king tells him. This is the second time they've met, but the first he's ever addressed sans directly. 

 

It's actually the first time _anyone_ besides Papyrus or Gaster has addressed him directly. The rotation of various lab assistants never quite manage to look directly at him.

 

It’s kind of fair. He doesn’t think he’d be thrilled if, say, he turned up for work tomorrow to find himself sharing a workspace with a team of the white rats they keep in wire cages along the back wall of the main lab. He can see how it would be unsettling, editing reports written by something he’d categorized long ago as _object_ rather than _person,_ having to make forced water-cooler conversation with a creature that shouldn’t even be standing on two legs.

 

They aren’t—shit, they’re not cruel to him by any means. They don’t pull awful pranks on him. They don’t rearrange his workspace, or alter his experiments or lock him inside the various rooms hidden deep beneath the Core. They don’t have any terrible nicknames for him. It’s nothing, really, compared to what waits for him at home every night when his shifts have ended.

 

They just… _nothing_ him.

 

So he thinks he can be forgiven for the way he jerks at the sound, surprised, and has to set down the glass beakers in his hands to avoid spilling over the king’s robes pooled around his feet.

 

He doesn’t make eye contact—he _knows better_ , Asgore could tear him in half with one arm tied behind his back—but he manages to stutter in the king’s general direction, “s-sir?”

 

"Your father is quite an asset to the kingdom.” The king’s voice is unexpectedly gentle, despite the fact that he dwarfs sans by several feet, this low, soothing thing that does not make the knot in san’s belly ease even a fraction. “We’re expecting great things from you too, son."

 

Sans blinks up at him, then, waits for a punchline—because hang on, _father_?? _what_??—but the king's eyes only crinkle warmly at the corners as he holds out one massive paw.

 

It’s easily the size of sans' head, each thick finger tipped with a heavy claw, delicately capped in a pattern of twining gold flowers. Probably keeps him from ripping up his own robes, sans observes absently, because that’s much easier to process, much easier to focus on than the concept of shaking Asgore’s hand. 

 

For a second, for way too long, sans’ mind goes blank and he just—he _stares_ , like some kind of idiot, like he doesn't know what to do with it. Like he's never seen a handshake before. 

 

The king's little pawpads look squishy and too pink, like jellybeans.

 

Sans has to bite down the urge to laugh at that, because he isn't even supposed to know what jellybeans are, but here he is with the king trying to shake his hand anyways, trying to touch him, like he doesn't know what sans is.

 

Like he doesn't know where his scuffed hands have _been_.

 

Maybe...maybe he doesn't.

 

"Shake," Gaster says mildly, though his own hands—hollow in the center now, but stronger than sans’, always, always—close around the edges of sans' shoulder blades through his ill-fitted labcoat. The left one bites into a bruise he hadn’t realized he had.

 

Sans’ grin doesn't waver one bit. Automatic, he obeys.

 

His fingerbones are embarrassingly dingy against the king's snowy fur, grey and cracked as the surface of a dried-up lake. 

 

Later that evening he will scour them with a toothbrush under a scalding tap until they're shaking even worse than usual, pale as he can get them, until they burn, until they _sting_ , breath he doesn’t have catching sharp in his ribcage— 

 

—but for now he can only stare, gaze black and vacant. His cheekbones burn a ruddy, faint red as his filthy hand vanishes into Asgore's grip. If the king takes notice of the way the smaller monster goes stock-still at his touch, he gives no indication.

 

"y-yeah," he stutters when Gaster gives another warning squeeze. "yeah, uh. lucky. sure thing, boss." 

 

Asgore looks puzzled. He does not ask for clarification, though, so sans doesn't offer it, just drops his attention back down to the glassware in front of him.

 

[??before/before/before/before??]

 

 

It’s the second time they meet and it's also the last but—

 

Eventually, man, eventually it happens over and over and _over_ again and sans wants to scream by the time they round the upper thirties of this broken fucking record, so he just ignores his Majesty and goes about his work with no regard for the crawling urgency of Gaster’s narrow-eyed glare heavy on his back. 

 

It doesn’t matter if he offends. It doesn’t change anything, ultimately. He’s seen every possible outcome from here, feels like, and as far as Asgore is concerned, sans is a non-entity, so why bother being anything more than an irritating blip on His Majesty’s radar? It isn’t worth the effort, isn’t worth the way his heart crawls up into his mouth every time he has to shake the man’s hand, so he just—he doesn’t.

 

And to be fair, the king gives him ample opportunity to remedy his mistake. He clears his throat, even, shuffles his massive weight from foot to foot, offering sans the chance to act as though he simply hadn’t realized he had company. Once, he offers a gentle, “Excuse me.”

 

Sans ignores it. 

 

Gaster does not.


	10. //<REDACTED>//

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this story is finally going to be part of the larger arc, but a couple things to note first: 
> 
> 1\. the fontcest isn't one-sided anymore for obvious reasons  
> 2\. from here on, this will run vaguely parallel to "little blue pills" but stick with the Underfell cast post- sans's disappearance, primarily Papyrus  
> 3\. i'm sorry about the annoying postmodernist bullshit i'm doing here, but only a little bit  
> 4\. this chapter is literally just a transition. the real chapter is the next one which is why they've been posted together.
> 
>  
> 
> this story really is getting massive--and i'm sorry the updates have been slower, but my brain don't work right. hopefully this isn't too confusing.

Alphys doesn't actually see sans disappear.  
  
So when Undyne asks, hours later, what she says in response— _No, I have no idea where he could have run off to, why do you ask?—_ isn't _technically_ a lie. Her voice doesn't even shake when she says it. Undyne buys it so easily, she nearly feels guilty.  
  
But she's watched sans do his little vanishing act before and it's hardly subtle, all pink light and a crisp _pop!_ as he neatly fucks the time-space continuum like it's nothing. She would have heard that, right? She would have noticed. There would have been more to it than the abrupt, hatcheted end of his screaming, wailing echo ringing tinny in her ears in the sudden silence.  
  
( ~~but it wasn't just that, was it? there was a line, this flat black thing like someone had sharpied it onto the very surface of the molecules that made up empty air, slashed into existence right next to sans's curled-up, trembling form, and it opened, kind of, yawned wide, she could have sworn she saw black fingers curling out of it, moving too fluid, like they were made up of a few too many joints,~~ _ ~~reaching for him—~~_  
  
—but then she blinks and she's just lying on the floor in the living room of Papyrus's house, skin sticky where her spilled cocktail has begun to dry. She hauls tail _out_ of there as fast as she can manage on unsteady legs.)  
  
She...doesn't think sans ran off to anywhere, is the thing. She thinks he was _taken_.  
  
This is not at all how it was supposed to go.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Undyne ft. Sad Pap
> 
>  
> 
> ...I hope this direction isn't too offputting for anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, uh, Papyrus isn't well. Please see end notes.

  
It takes three weeks—not to the day, okay, maybe closer to two and three quarters—for Undyne to finally run out of paperwork.  
  
It takes nearly another full week after _that_ for her to run out of all the various minutiae she's been avoiding over the past six years of her Captainship. It's about the time she begins a third polish on her backup armor's already-gleaming chestplate that Alphys finally loses her considerable patience.  
  
“When are you going to see him?”  
  
When Undyne's claws slip and rake over the metal with an awful screech, polishing brush clattering to the tile, Alphys only makes a faint, amused sound from behind her. Undyne slants her a glare over one ropy shoulder “See who, Alph?”  
  
“Oh, come on.” There follows the rasp of Alphys's rough fingers against paper as she turns the page. Undyne knows without needing to turn around that she's still reading, her amber eyes tracking steady over the words even as she carries on a conversation.  
  
(After all these years sharing a bed with the girl, it's probably nothing more than stupid sentiment, but something warm and impressed squirms in Undyne's belly anyways. Her mate is so _smart_.)  
  
“People are talking, you know,” Alphys adds, almost as an afterthought. “If he were anyone else, you'd have court-martialed him for desertion by now.”  
  
Undyne hisses at that, low, and involuntary. She regrets it immediately—it's the kind of sound Melusine used to scold her for as a child, a wordless, animal noise in the back of her throat. “If you've got something to say, you may as well just _say it_ ,” she growls.  
  
“I'm not trying to be cruel,” Alphys says. The soft, urgent words do their job—they knock Undyne neatly from the bleak spiral of rage she's been slipping into and she slumps a little, suddenly ashamed. She _knows_ her mate didn't mean it quite like that. Knows she's got this habit, right, of analyzing the broader picture before she's really clocking how she feels about anything, much less how _Undyne_ feels. Besides, while her backpeddling might still be painful to watch, at least she's aware of it now. She's trying. “But the last thing you need right now is a public spectacle, right? Papyrus is _crazy_ , Undyne. You can't just leave him to rot there, because he won't. He's a time bomb and you know it.”  
  
She's right, of course. She nearly always is, especially when it comes to Undyne's questionably-unhinged acquaintances, because she has the objectivity that distance grants her. Alphys doesn't dislike Papyrus. She doesn't _anything_ Papyrus.  
  
From a commander's standpoint having that opposing point of view is invaluable to her. It's part of what makes them work so well together, the way Alphys never _ever_ has the good sense to hold her tongue around Undyne, no matter how far she might be outranked. In most situations, it's one of the thing she loves most about her partner.  
  
But. _Papyrus_.  
  
Papyrus has always been this stupid soft spot, this little pocket of willful blindness, like a half-mad dog she'd managed to tame despite knowing at any second, it was apt to turn on her. It's a matter of knowing what will make him snap, mostly, learning where to intercept him that he'll do the least damage. It's something she's spent the better part of a decade perfecting.  
  
She loves Papyrus. Mostly she manages to avoid getting bitten, these days.  
  
He was....not _better_ , maybe, because he's unwell on a scale Undyne can't begin to understand, but he's been a little more even, lately. A little less prone to those hair-trigger explosions.  
  
(Once, she had even caught him smiling fondly at his brother across the table during a Guard meeting, though she doubts anyone outside their dented little triad could actually identify that particular expressionas a smile.  
  
His normally-furrowed brow had been a little more relaxed, anyways, one corner of his scowling mouth curled up only faintly as he watched sans snore into his folded forearms. The fur lining of his jacket fluttered gently with every exhale. It was the closest to peaceful she had ever seen the little guy look, now she thought about it.  
  
Granted, she'd also caught Papyrus not a week later with one boot shoved ruthlessly between sans's splayed legs at that very same table during an entirely separate meeting, so...she's not entirely sure _that_ particular recollection was a great gauge of his mental state. Her second-in-command had been grinning wide as a hyena staring down a fresh kill the whole time, while sans sweated profusely, squirmed and fought to keep his facial expression somewhat neutral.  
  
He managed impressively well for the entire meeting, actually, which was how Undyne had missed it in the first place, but he made an undignified little sound when Papyrus shifted in his chair and (she guesses) the heavy sole ground against his pelvis, so.  
  
She carefully did not consider how much practice he must have had, to maintain that kind of composure while she droned on about an updated attendance policy.  
  
“Do not _ever_ ,” she had warned Papyrus later, jabbing one black-nailed finger up at him, “pull a stunt like that again when you're on the clock. I've seen the fucking footage,” she snarled, when he opened his mouth to protest. “I know why he's always falling asleep at his post, _Leiutenent_.”  
  
Papyrus didn't flinch, exactly, but his expression went dark and flat. He nodded once, jerkily, turned on his heel, and stalked out of the room without another word.  
  
Predictably, there had been no more footage.  
  
They never spoke of it again.)  
  
((And she definitely _never ever_ thinks about the weary resignation on sans's face, or about the exhausted way his skull kind of sagged on his neck as Papyrus spun him around and slammed him facefirst into the scarred wooden countertop of his post. He hadn't so much as bothered to argue. His expression hadn't even changed.  
  
It makes her sick to think about it, so she doesn't and it's _none of her business anyways_.))  
  
“God _dammit_ , Alphys,” Undyne sighs, and sets the jar of polish down on the table.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She hasn't actually seen Papyrus stoned since they were about sixteen.  
  
He'd been useless with a pipe then, an absolute catastrophe with a bong, and it was really only when Undyne had introduced joints with grape-flavored papers into the mix that he'd showed some stirrings of interest in the stuff. He even got pretty good at rolling, after a few mishaps that had the two of them picking fine-ground weed out of the filthy carpet fibers for _hours_.  
  
He still coughed like a babybones, though, every single time, no matter how gently he tried to pull into whatever passed for his lungs. She teased him for it mercilessly, though he never really did more than glare at her and exhale smoke directly into her face in retaliation.  
  
For him, that was practically affectionate.  
  
She does remember, though, with an unfortunate kind of horrified clarity, that he was one of those types that went from zero to sixty within the span of a couple hits. Normally, that didn't do much more than leave him morose, fucked-out and bleary, far too honest about any question she might ask.  
  
That had been...interesting, to say the least, when he'd been younger, wound tight and practically bursting at the seams for _someone_ to ask about the unfeeling creature that lived in his house and played at being his father. Undyne had, as a kid, learned far more than she really wanted to know this way. She didn't even need to press the issue, generally—it was almost impossible to stop Papyrus once he'd been given permission to speak, though everything was delivered in this unnervingly dull, flat tone she'd be willing to bet he learned from his brother.  
  
  
(The worst, the _absolute worst_ was the time he'd showed up at her bedroom window half-dressed, barefoot, damp from the misty Waterfall air, sockets blank and black and empty as he stammered out an apology for bothering her, but could he come in, please, he didn't have anywhere else to go.  
  
The fact that the word “please” had even come out of his mouth had been jarring enough that Undyne had just stood aside and let him climb in, not even protesting when he collapsed heavily onto her bed, though he was dripping cold condensation. He was shaking hard enough that she could hear it, a faint, ceramic rattling, so she didn't bother actually asking before she fetched the pipe from where she'd shoved it—under her pillow, half-assed, but it wasn't like Melusine really cared, as long as her performance stayed consistent—and offered it to Papyrus.  
  
He had been trembling badly enough that he couldn't light it himself. She helped him, of course, but his breath was so ragged that he nearly choked on the first lungful, coughing into his own shoulder instead of her face in a bizarrely polite display. It didn't stop him from taking another hit, though, or another and another and another until he finally inhaled ash on the last draw and deemed that bowl cashed.  
  
Undyne had reached for her grinder, privately grateful to have something to do with her hands. Only when she was turned away had she finally asked, quietly, “Are you okay, Pap?”  
  
He hadn't looked at her. Hadn't even moved to offer her the empty pipe so she could re-pack it, hadn't tapped the ash out. He had just sort of stared at the facing wall, hands snarled together tightly in his lap.  
  
[His jeans were unbuttoned, she remembers having noticed now. She can't recall if it had made her feel particularly ill at the time, but it most definitely does in retrospect.]  
  
It had taken him so long to answer that she'd actually startled at the sound of his voice, though it was much softer than his usual grating snarl. “He. Dad, he—he made me—with _Sans—_ “  
  
He hadn't said it. He hadn't needed to, really, beyond that nauseating handful of words.  
  
But he also hadn't argued with her when she had stripped his wet clothing off to replace it with too-short (but warm and clean) articles of her own. He hadn't struggled at all when she had tucked him firmly beneath her covers. He'd even let her curl up at his back, though he'd flinched when she'd laid an arm across his chest.  
  
He hadn't said no, she guesses, which was sort of the whole _thing_ to begin with.)  
  
  
She's armed for that upsetting eventuality, anyways, a quarter of her best bud wrapped tight in a sandwich bag tucked into the pocket of her leather jacket.  
  
She smells it the instant she opens the front door, though, thick and cloying in the stale air. She realizes she probably shouldn't have bothered—he seems to have finally confiscated his brother's stash, the way he's been threatening to for years.  
  
“ _Fuck_ ,” she says to no one, low, surveying the wreck her second-in-command has made of his own living room as she steps inside.  
  
It had been a nice place once, she vaguely remembers. It had certainly seemed intimidating anyways, when she had been very small. She doesn't know _quite_ what happened—Papyrus's job became increasingly demanding, maybe, and sans only seemed to get more lethargic with every year that passed—but it's been looking a little rough around the edges for the better part of a decade now. Papyrus keeps the house meticulously organized, maybe, but his obsessive straightening never extended to the cobwebs collecting dust in the corners, or the gradual greying of the hall carpet.  
  
As for sans, well. She's pretty sure his household contributions don't consist of chores so much, these days.  
  
It's _never_ looked like this before, though, not even the morning after the gnarliest of their house parties. Papyrus appears to have done his level best to act as a one-monster wrecking crew, and it's almost impressive how throughly he's managed to demolish the place. The sofa's been flipped backwards so hard the frame has cracked. It sags pitifully now, glittering with bits of broken glass from the overhead light. He's put his fist into the television screen, though it functions—she can tell because it's still on, muted, some shitty music video playing just fine save for how it's all warped in the center where he'd cracked the LCD. There aren't lamps in the room so much anymore, just a scattering of ceramic shards, dust ground white into the carpet and stained unnervingly red-brown where Papyrus seems to have walked over them without even noticing.  
  
He's broken the glass of every single picture frame on the wall on his way up the stairs, slashed through the canvas of the painting hung in the hallway, and when she opens the door to his bedroom, she's relieved to find his bed empty, considering the fact that it's surrounded with the wicked, fractured pieces of what looks like every single mirror Papyrus owns.  
  
  
Papyrus is asleep when she finds him, sprawled out on sans's dingy bare mattress with his combat boots still on and an empty beer bottle tucked into the crook of his arm like a teddy bear. He's surrounded by what looks like the majority of their liquor cabinet, every single bottle missing its cap and predictably empty. He's not wearing a shirt. She didn't even know he _owned_ sweatpants. The circles beneath his eye sockets are a brand new shade of sickly purple-grey she's never seen on him before.  
  
He looks like shit _._  
  
She just watches him for a moment, hesitant to disturb what little rest he's managed. Instead, her eyes tick over the tally marks notched into his chest, taking full advantage of the rare sight of Papyrus actually holding still for once.  
  
The things are absolutely _everywhere_ , covering his right side from jawbone to mid-sternum, some even flecked here and there on the upper part of his humerus. She recognizes her own neat, shallow marks alongside some nasty, deep gouges where it looks like claws had simply carved away chunks of bone. Some of those sit at an odd angle, one that couldn't have come from anyone but Papyrus himself.  
  
She shudders. No wonder he wears that damn scarf all the time.  
  
There's a mostly-intact joint on the mattress next to him (seared a neat little hole into the covering, too, idiot could have burned to death in his _sleep_ and what a stupid fucking way to go) and she picks it up, sticking the chewed end between her teeth. She really hopes Papyus hasn't found the pills yet.  
  
“Hey,” she says, nudging him in the hip with the toe of her boot. She does it again, harder, when he barely stirs. “Hey, asshole. Wake up. You're, like, two weeks late for your last shift.”  
  
That gets her a socket half-cracked open, at least, one bleary eyelight fixing on her. “You're stealing my weed,” he grumbles, instead of anything remotely helpful.  
  
She lights the joint with a shrug, taking a generous pull on it before she offers it back, which only makes him scowl more. He at least pushes himself upright to take it from her. She thinks that has to count for something, maybe, though the movement makes her fully aware of how long it's probably been since he'd last showered. “No, I'm stealing sans's weed. And you smell like shit,” she fires back. He only extends one long middle finger in her direction in response—one long, cracked, _very_ _b_ _loody_ middle finger.  
  
Undyne wants, with a strange, sudden clarity, to wrap her own small blue fingers around those busted knuckles. She wants to smooth a gentle thumb over them and maybe watch the way it makes him flinch, and ask what the fuck made him think breaking his hands open on sheetrock would make his brother come home. Why he's so stubborn and stupid that he prefers _drinking himself to death_ alone in his house to picking up the goddamn phone and calling her.  
  
She doesn't of course.  
  
They smoke the rest of the joint in something approaching companionable silence. When she tells Papyrus she's taking him to Grillby's so she can personally watch him eat at least five cheeseburgers, _don't you dare argue, that is a direct order from your commanding officer,_ he's at least stoned enough that he forgets to protest, so.  
  
Mission accomplished, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> self-harm, self-destructive behavior, self-injury, Papyrus throws a temper tantrum and has no one left to take it out on, referenced underaged bad touch


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Papyrus has a bad time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's that? you wanted 3k of self-indulgent character porn? okay.
> 
>  
> 
> yesterday i got one year closer to death so i got y'all this.

Undyne thinks sans killed himself.  
  
She never says as much, not directly, but she doesn't have to—he figured it out quickly enough when her first response upon hearing that sans was gone had only been a hitch in her breathing, a slow, sighed, “Oh, _Pap,_ did he...did he leave a note?”  
  
Which had been a puzzling handful of seconds, trying to figure out why she thought he'd be calling if sans had, because surely a note would have been some indication of where he'd scurried off to. Surely she doesn't think he'd be so remiss as to ignore something like that. He's a little bit stung, actually, that his commander apparently thinks so little of his deductive reasoning.  
  
And then it clicks that she doesn't mean a note, she means _A Note_ , capitalized, the kind of note you don't dare attach an honest modifier to, like—like sans has finally fucked off somewhere permanently. Like even if he had, he would have bothered taking the time to do something as clearheaded and logical as writing an explanation down. She clearly doesn't know his brother very well, even after all these years.  
  
(He didn't leave a note last time, after all, did he? Papyrus had just woken up and he was gone, vanished from his cushion at the foot of the bed, and it's—he'd been a kid, right, he'd been small enough to be scared at the overwhelming emptiness of their house without his brother's constant, trembling presence.  
  
...but that didn't quite make sense either, did it, because sans is a complete asshole, but he's never really been selfish. Never would have left Papyrus entirely alone at that age to fend for himself, no matter how unbearable he might have found his own existence. Papyrus doesn't think he could, honestly, that protective instinct is so hard-wired into him. sans would have known that was a death sentence for a child, never mind one as small and sickly as Papyrus had been.  
  
So there had been...someone else to take care of him, he thinks, even if he can't recall a childhood babysitter or anything. There must have been, though he has no clear memory of anyone else— just this tall, vague kind of shape that gives him an awful headache when he thinks about it too hard, a thrumming kind of pressure in his skull like something monstrous might be trying to hatch from it.  
  
—he remembers hands, for some inexplicable reason. Far too many hands.  
  
_Ow.)_  
  
Papyrus manages to not snort in derision but only just, because Undyne's voice has gone all soft now that she's treading on uncertain ground. She always gets like this when something's wrong, gentle and cautious and entirely at odds with her complete lack of social grace otherwise.  
  
He _loathes_ it. She probably means it to be comforting, but it never fails to make Papyrus feel a little bit like he's a homemade bomb with a faulty timer, hair-trigger, primed to go off at the slightest provocation. Something about it immediately sets his teeth on edge.  
  
“No,” he growls, and it comes out rougher than he means it to, maybe. “No, sans is...he's missing, Undyne, he's not dead.”  
  
((This will be the sticking point of their arguments for the next several weeks, though he has no real way of knowing it at the time.))  
  
Silence. And then, hesitantly, “Papyrus— “  
  
“Fuck off,” he snarls, not-stomach twisting itself into new and horrible shapes. She _never_ calls him by his full name. His phone's plastic casing gives an alarming creak, he's gripping it so hard. “Fuck off with that, he's _not_ _dead_.”  
  
She doesn't seem to know what to follow that with, so she just tries, awkwardly, “...okay, Pap. Sure. Did you, uh...did you want to come down and...file a report?”  
  
Which he doesn't, really, because that involves—shit, that involves leaving the house and what if sans comes back when he's gone, what if he's hurt and stumbling his way home and he finally drags himself back, shivering and cold and probably bleeding—he somehow manages to _constantly_ be injured, despite never actually seeming to do anything—what if he makes it home only to find the place cold, dark, empty, no evidence he'd even been missed at all, what if—  
  
He shakes himself. Scowls vicious at the facing wall, though it doesn't hold anything more offensive than a several-years-old calendar and a large water stain shaped sort of like a buffalo that he keeps meaning (and subsequently forgetting) to investigate. “Yeah, okay,” he mutters at it.  
  
The buffalo, obviously, doesn't respond.  
  
“Okay,” Undyne echoes in his ear canal, sounding dim, faraway, maybe a little relieved. “See you in a few?”  
  
He's vaguely aware that he makes some noise of agreement, some indication that he's actually going to cooperate with her without being directly ordered to, but still.  
  
He really doubts she's surprised when he never shows.  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
  
Papyrus doesn't like Grillby.  
  
It's not like...okay, the guy has never been shitty to him, really. They've never had an actual argument. He's gotten a little brisk with Papyrus on a few occasions, maybe, those times he's had to borrow sans's phone to call and ask Papyrus to come pick his brother up, please, he's getting into fights again with the dogs over absolutely nothing. Again.  
  
The irritation is kind of understandable, Papyrus thinks. He's irritated by sans a _lot_. It's nearly a relief that he isn't the only one.  
  
And a couple times—late nights in particular, nights that sans is incoherent and practically unconscious by the time Papyrus shows up to carry him home—Grillby has even had a neat cardboard box waiting for him, like he somehow knows Papyrus secretly adores the bar's shitty burgers.  
  
sans told him, probably.  
  
Asshole _._  
  
Papyrus eats them anyways, alone on the couch with his brother snoring from the room upstairs and all the lights turned off, wolfing the food down so fast he barely tastes it. Like it somehow doesn't count, so long as he doesn't have any time to actually enjoy it.  
  
It makes him feel only a little bit better about the fact that he's never paid for the takeout in his life. He doesn't even want to think about sans's tab, carefully does not consider what his brother might be doing in exchange for the truly alarming amount of liquor he manages to fit inside that stunted little body.  
  
It wasn't like there was a long list of places to check, though. sans hadn't been at his post, which was irritatingly typical, and when Papyrus had texted Undyne, she'd been completely mystified that he thought she hung out with sans enough to have any idea where he might have disappeared to.  
  
Which...left the bar. Because _of course_ it did.  
  
If he really thinks about it—which he doesn't do, as a general rule—he supposes it sort of makes sense that on a night like tonight, bitter cold with the wind literally howling through the claw-fingered branches of the surrounding trees, Grillby's wouldn't be busy. It makes sense that people would prefer the warmth of their own homes over even the tentative companionship the filthy little bar offers.  
  
He's not expecting to deal with only a single, unconscious patron slumped over the bartop, though. He's expecting there to be _something_ to keep him from being the entirely of Grillby's unsettling focus, but as Papyrus closes the door behind him, kicking snow from his boots, Grillby's eyes (?) fix on him. He tips his head to the side a few degrees, though he carries on with his task of polishing the neat stack of glassware he's accumulated next to his elbow.  
  
As Papyrus watches, he carefully sets a tumbler on the top of the structure, checking that it seems to be holding steady, before he says, finally, “.........hello, Papyrus.”  
  
God, even his _voice_ grates at Papyrus, this low, crackling thing that doesn't seem like a register where speech should even be possible. Papyrus doesn't bother with more than a short, sharp nod as he approaches. He doesn't take a seat. Doesn't even look at sans's usual perch. Pauses, claws curled round the edge of the scarred bartop because now that he's actually here, actually faced with Grillby's unruffled calm, he's completely blanking on how to ask.  
  
“Have you seen sans?” he settles on eventually, though it's an effort to keep his tone light, neutral. Non-accusatory. He may not like the establishment, but he's not nearly stupid enough to anger a monster who's so thoughtfully corralled Snowdin's more problematic citizens into one building. It's a neutral ground, kind of, and maybe Papyrus loathes in the very depths of his soul the way his boot soles stick to the grimy floorboards, but he understands the necessity of it. He does.  
  
Still.  
  
Grillby frowns, he thinks. Something in his expression wrinkles, anyways, and he says, “..............not in a few days, no. Should I have seen him?”  
  
Papyrus isn't sure how to answer that. He takes pains not to know what sans is up to when they're not together—he gets sort of obsessive about it otherwise. It makes it hard to focus, hard to _think_ past the constant nagging certainly that somewhere out there in the Underground his brother is running his stupid mouth off for the last time at a monster that won't care _whose_ name is on his collar, who'll just see that smarmy little grin and that brittle HP as the proverbial free lunch that it is.  
  
And Papyrus can't...he can't function, really, if he stops to consider that at all. He can't manage to wrestle his train of thought past that particular stumbling block. All he can focus on is the familiar lurch of panic swelling in the empty cage of his ribs, the familiar slick of his brother's blood on greyed bone. All he can hear is sans's cracked smoker's rasp, _i'm fine, really_ followed by that stupid little giggle that means he's lying to Papyrus through his busted teeth.  
  
Again. Like he thinks Papyrus can't tell.  
  
“If you see him,” Papyrus says instead of any of that, though, dizzy, his own voice tinny in his ear canals like it's being patched in through a bad connection, “call me, would you?”  
  
And that should be it. That should be the end of things, that should be enough for Papyrus to turn on his heel and stalk out the door and trust that whatever scrap of loyalty Grillby has to the Crown means that he might actually follow orders. That he might actually call, were sans to show his stupid face any time soon.  
  
Instead, Grillby—faster than he's ever seen the bartender move, what the fuck?—grabs for Papyrus's arm before he quite makes it outside the guy's reach. His fingers bite into Papyrus's radius _hard_ , a surprising flare of heat, even though the thick leather of his glove.  
  
It doesn't really hurt, but Papyrus flinches before he entirely clocks that he's going to. Jerks back, if only minutely, like he'd been expecting that hand across his face instead, which. His cheekbones positively _burn_ with humiliated rage when he realizes it, when he sees the way Grillby's brow wrinkles in a horrifying kind of sympathy.  
  
“.......you too, huh?” is all he says, though, which isn't remotely helpful. Papyrus scowls. He doesn't answer.  
  
He isn't even sure what the question is.  
  
“Unhand me,” he hisses. Grillby is surprisingly strong, though, considering his cushy line of work, and his grip on Papyrus's arm doesn't so much as waver. Instead, he sort of pulls Papyrus down onto an empty barstool. It doesn't escape his notice that Grillby deliberately picks one a good four spaces away from sans's usual spot.  
  
“.........have you eaten......?”  
  
Papyrus blinks. “What?”  
  
That...is not at all what he'd been expecting. Grillby isn't even looking at him anymore, turning instead to glance back at the kitchen door, though he keeps his hand firmly on Papyrus's arm. He seems concerned that his quarry might bolt out the door like a startled rabbit without it.  
  
“.......you're shaking,” Grillby points out, not unkindly. “......at least let me get you some food. My cook's gone home for the night, but I'm sure I can find something.....”  
  
And the thing is? The thing is, the gnawing uncertainty in the pit of Papyrus's incorporal stomach is _awful_. The thing is, he loathes the fine trembling of his bones and the faint ceramic rattle they produce, no matter how tightly he folds his arms across his chest. The thing is, the thought of going back to his cold, empty house makes him feel so fucking sick, that for just a heartbeat, one single wavering moment of weakness, he actually considers taking Grillby up on his offer.  
  
Except then, as the elemental meanders towards the kitchen, he has the audacity to tack on, “........sans would never forgive me if I let you run yourself ragged like that, after all.”  
  
It isn't even nasty, the way he says it. He doesn't sound bitter or angry or like he's offering anything but genuine goddamn sympathy. Doesn't sound like anything but a guy who's fully aware that his friend's brother is _maybe_ a little bit unhinged. Maybe shouldn't be left on his own, unsupervised. Like he needs an adult, now that sans has pulled another of his disappearing acts.  
  
Like sans was the one taking care of _Papyrus_ , like he didn't drag his older brother's drunk ass home five nights out of seven, like he didn't made sure sans actually made it to to the bed, made sure he had water and aspirin for the inevitable dawning of the next morning's hangover, made sure his alarm was set so he had some minute chance of getting to work on time—  
  
Grillby's vanished into the kitchen by the time Papyrus manages to swallow down that particular tidal wave of fury, though, so he says nothing. Makes no sound at all. Doesn't bother with a goodbye.  
  
He wastes no time making a beeline out the door, his own not-pulse still pounding faint in his skull, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders braced against the biting wind.  
  
  
He goes home. What else can he do?  
  
  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
  
  
sans always seemed happier, somehow, when he drank.  
  
Papyrus personally doesn't get it, and he's trying here, he really is. He's been trying for _days,_ ever since sans disappeared _,_ but nothing in their liquor cabinet thus far has produced anything even close to the way his brother's cheekbones flush pleasantly when he's fucked up, or the loose, fluid way he moves, like he's finally granting himself permission to relax.  
  
It doesn't make Papyrus at all want to crack shitty jokes, or get into heated debates about the Star Wars prequels with anyone who'll listen— “those films alone,” sans had declared once, darkly, to the entirety of a quasi-packed Grillby's, “should be all the justification we'd ever need to wipe humanity off the fuckin' _planet_ ,” —and they certainly don't stir whatever bleak, desperate thing had driven sans into his bed every single time after, reeking of smoke and tasting like the bitter warmth of whiskey, eyelights blacked out, grasping claws pleading in a way he's never quite managed aloud.  
  
( _make_ _it hurt,_ he'd begged Papyrus only once, flushed, panting, from his place kneeling on the floor, the vague glow of tangerine magic still smeared all across his teeth and tongue. _please, Pap, i need you to—_  
  
And then he'd taken hold of Papyrus's lax hand, brought those broad, numb fingerbones to his own throat and guided them around the thin strip of leather sitting there, uncharacteristically careful to avoid poking them on the sharp spikes. He'd just kind of pushed, clumsy but insistent, until Papyrus grabbed the thing of his own volition and _pulled_ , hard enough to jolt a startled little yelp out of his brother. Hard enough to choke his shaking breath to a halt.  
  
sans actually moaned when Papyrus did it and then again, louder, when Papyrus dragged him further into the cradle of his lap by the collar. It wasn't a noise he'd ever heard sans make before, this low, shuddering, uncertain sound like a muscle he wasn't terribly used to flexing. Like it ached, just a little.  
  
_aw, yeah_ , he'd hissed, _harder,_ but all Papyrus actually registered was the way that his eyelights flicked waveringly back to life, brighter the more he pulled, so he'd—  
  
Well, he'd choked sans until those dusty pink pinpricks stayed locked firmly on him, until sans seemed like he was back on somewhat solid ground. Hadn't eased up when his brother had rasped, claws scrabbling at the collar but making no real effort to actually unbuckle the thing, _hit me, fuckin'—just hit me, man, c'mon, i know you want to._  
  
And maybe he did. Maybe sans knew better than Papyrus because he had _always_ known better than Papyrus. Had always been able to calm him down, to uncurl him from the way he snarled up inside sometimes with this gentle, soothing rationale, his, _you're okay, Pap, everything is okay, you just gotta breathe with me,_ which would probably have just made him angrier, honestly, coming from exactly anyone else.  
  
Maybe he really did want to do it because he'd obeyed, hadn't he, he'd hauled off and backhanded his brother so hard across the face that it had cracked his nasal cavity (again), a thin trickle of blood sliding down the dim white bone to disappear into the notches between his teeth. Had watched, expression carefully neutral, even as sans tipped his skull back, groaned and (Papyrus assumed) came, rocking against the heel of his own hand, with this bitten-off, wrecked little cry.  
  
And then there had been probably a solid ten, fifteen minutes after where Papyrus had just...stopped, sort of, like all his motor functions had their power cut. He'd just stared, blank, at his own kneecaps as sans had stirred and come around from his staticky haze to shake Papyrus gently by the shoulders and repeat his name, over and over, at an increasingly-panicked volume.  
  
It was the strangest thing, like he heard the words and just...failed entirely to process them, to remember what they were supposed to mean. Failed to even register that they were directed at him, or maybe that he even had a name at all, the concept vague and meaningless through the grey blanket of whatever the fuck had happened to his brain. It was just...off, sort of, entirely without permission, like he'd been reduced down to nothing more than involuntary functions. His entire being had narrowed to the even in-and-out of his breath, the faint stirring of his own magic in his marrow.  
  
It was _terrifying_.  
  
Eventually, Papyrus managed to unstick himself from the fog enough to lift his head and fix muzzy eyelights on his brother, to blink, shake himself and mumble, “Yeah, yeah, shut up, will you? I'm here.”  
  
sans hadn't looked at all convinced, though he hadn't said anything at the time. He'd just wrinkled his browbone, tilted his skull to the side a few degrees and dropped it entirely when Papyrus fixed him with the most vicious glare he could manage.  
  
He'd never asked again.)  
  
Even the whiskey doesn't do that for him, though. It doesn't make him want to do anything at all but sleep, maybe, which he does several times a day now. Which is probably cause for alarm, if he had the energy for it.  
  
sans's mattress smells _terrible_. It doesn't remotely matter to him.  
  
Undyne calls him fifty-eight times before his phone battery dies, and that really doesn't, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alcoholism, alcohol abuse, incesty stuff, some nonconny element as per usual, choking, sexual violence, masochism, Papyrus copes, dissociation, Papyrus has weird relationships with food, his brother and also everything else in the world.
> 
>  
> 
> questions? comments? concerns? want me to tell you weird animal facts? come yell at me at [ SFW ](http://vstheworld.tumblr.com) or [ NSFW ](http://morelikeskelesinstwopointoh.tumblr.com) tumbls

**Author's Note:**

> violence, gross codependency, sans needs a hug, sans hates himself, self-harm, masochism, ritual violence, systematic violence, welcome to mental illness fun times, anxiety, abusive relationships, (sort-of) incestuous relationship, Gaster is the #1 worst dad

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] life's a game, life's a joke--fuck it, why not go for broke?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7627864) by [GoLBPodfics (digiella)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/digiella/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)




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